John 11:31-32

“ The Jews therefore who were with her in the house and were comforting her, when they saw that she rose up suddenly and went out, followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32. When therefore Mary had come to the place where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother would not have died. ”

One and the same thought had filled the soul of the two sisters and perhaps that of the dying man in his last hours: If Jesus were here! But on this common foundation of grief and regret some significant differences between the two sisters appear. We have remarked the masculine character of Martha's faith. Mary, on the contrary, seemed to be altogether overwhelmed by her grief: hers was a nature wholly feminine. And, like persons of vivid impressions, she makes no energetic effort to overcome the dejection which got the mastery of her. She lets herself fall at Jesus' feet, which Martha had not done; it is, moreover, the place which she loves (Luke 10:39; John 12:3). She does not add to the expression of her grief, as does her sister, a word of faith and hope. There are, finally, in the exclamation which is common to her and Martha, two shades of differences which are not accidental. Instead of ἐτεθνήκει, he is dead (the actual state), which the Byzantine authorities place in the mouth of Martha, John 11:21, she says: ἀπέθανε : he has done the act of dying; it is as if she were still at the cruel moment in which the separation was accomplished. This shade of difference in the received reading (John 11:27) speaks in favor of its authenticity. Then the pronoun μου, of me, is placed in the mouth of Mary before ὁ ἀδελφός, the brother, and even, according to the Alexandrian reading, before ἀπέθανε : a part of herself, as it were, is gone. Thus, in Martha, a nature practical and full of elasticity, capable of energetically reacting against a depressing feeling; in Mary, a sensibility given up, without the least trace of reaction, to the feeling which absorbs her. What truth in every feature of this picture!

Jesus knows the human heart too well to attempt to apply to Mary the method which He has just employed with Martha. With a grief like hers, there is no need of teaching and speaking; there is need of sympathizing and acting.