Today's Sermon
Today we have the beautiful and very instructive account of Jesus’ visit to the home of Martha and Mary, two sisters with very different – even opposite – orientations. Martha “is commonly regarded as typifying the ‘active Christian life’ as contrasted with Mary, who typifies the ‘contemplative’” (The Oxford Dictionary the Christian Church (second edition; Oxford University Press, 1958, 1974), article on “Martha”). The different character of these two women and Jesus’ response to them is very instructive for us and has been so throughout the history of the Church. This Scripture passage shows us the superiority of a contemplative spirit over an exaggerated overly active spirit. It also teaches us the superiority of the contemplative life over the active Christian life, for Mary “has chosen the good portion” (Luke 10:42).
St. Paul contrasts the contemplative with the active life-orientation, when referring to an unmarried woman (the contemplative) who has an undivided heart and single-minded devotion to the Lord (exemplified by Mary): “The unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit … I say this … to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:34, 35). In other words, St. Paul presents the ideal of the contemplative spirit (represented by Mary) as one who has an undivided heart and a single-minded, loving, quiet, listening devotion to the Lord and is concerned about being holy in body and spirit. St. Paul tells us this “to secure your
undivided devotion to the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:35).
This has become in Christian history the contrast between marriage and celibacy for the Lord, indicating the superiority of celibacy over marriage. Both are good but the celibate contemplative life is better , as St. Paul clearly teaches us, “He who marries his betrothed does
well; and he who refrains from marriage will do
better” (1 Corinthians 7:38).
Jesus himself is the ultimate model for the contemplative life. On one occasion, he “in the morning, a great while before day … rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35). On another occasion, “he went out into the hills to pray; and all night he continued in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12).
Jesus was a human being like us, but he was also God, the divine Son of God. In his human nature he needed to pray as we need to pray, but even in his divine nature he needs to bask in the splendor of his Father’s love. Full-time contemplatives make these incidents of prayer in Jesus’ life the whole proposal of their own way of life, trying to imitate his contemplative withdrawal into the desert or mountains to pray. And we remember that Jesus, before beginning his ministry and as a preparation for it, spent “forty days in the wilderness … and he ate nothing in those days” (Luke 4:2).
Jesus was indeed a contemplative, but he combined this contemplative orientation with an active life of ministry, preaching the word of God. Martha, however, as she appears in today’s gospel, seems to have lost her balance, for she is fretful, anxious, worried, and concerned about many minor details, so much so that she forgets the whole purpose of Jesus’ visit to her. Mary at least fulfilled the purpose of his visit, for she sat at his feet and they looked at each other and conversed together; and Jesus was surely teaching her spiritual things, for she “listened to his teaching” (Luke 10:39).
“Our Lord prizes our affection above our service” (William MacDonald, The Believers Bible Commentary (Thomas Nelson, 1989), page 1411), and he “wants to convert us from Martha’s into Mary’s” (CA Coates, An Outline of Luke’s Gospel , page 129 in MacDonald, Commentary, page 1411). Jesus also knows that we need to do what Mary did. “He knows that our first need is to sit at His feet and learn His will” (Charles R Erdman, The Gospel of Luke , page 112 in MacDonald, Commentary , page 1411).
Jesus’ words to Martha, “One thing is needful” (Luke 10:42), numerous Fathers of the Church (see Joseph Benson (1749-1821)) have interpreted as meaning only one course or dish is necessary, not an elaborate meal with many fancy dishes, frying pans, exotic seasoning, and doctored-up food. I think that this is a good interpretation, because it supports Mary’s orientation as a loving person-oriented person, attentively listening to Jesus. Besides, elaborate restaurant-quality meals usually are not all that healthy, for they weigh us down both physically and spiritually, thereby impeding contemplative prayer, and they distract us with many worldly desires that divide our hearts away from a pure and undivided love and devotion to the Lord alone. In fact, full-time professional contemplatives (strict monks) eat simply. They do not eat meat, and generally their food is simple, plain, and healthy so as not to distract them by many worldly things and desires from their focus on Jesus himself and a loving visit with him, sitting at his feet, as it were, listening attentively to his every word.
How did Jesus pray, when he spent a whole night in prayer in the hills or when he “in the morning, a great while before the day … rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35)? We don’t know how he prayed, but we do know that the contemplative tradition of the Church from its beginning has focused on both vocal prayer – reciting Psalms interspersed with brief Scripture lessons – and silent contemplative prayer, where one sits quietly, without moving, very early in the morning, long before dawn, in a dark place, with eyes closed, putting oneself in the presence of the Lord; and perhaps, as many do today, reciting over and over again a short prayer.
This repetitive reciting of a short prayer focuses the mind and heart on the Lord, and helps block out the many distractions that naturally come to our mind. The most famous and probably the most used form of repeated short prayer is the “Jesus Prayer,” that Western monks have learned from Eastern monks of the Orthodox Church, for they were great practitioners of this prayer and even wrote treatises on it, studying and explaining it (many of these treatises from antiquity to the present can be found in the
Philokalia ).
We note that the Greek New Testament calls Mary’s orientation “the good portion” (ten agathen merida ) (Luke 10:42). But some scholars have pointed out that this Greek expression is an approximation of a Semitic expression meaning “better” (when two things are being compared, as in the present case) or “best” (when many things are being compared). (Max Zerwick, SJ and Mary Grossvenor, A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament (fifth, revised edition; Editrice Pontifico Instituto Biblico, Roma 1996), page 222). In this case, Jesus is telling Mary that her way is better than Martha’s distracted, aggravated, frenzied, anxious attempt to please Jesus by serving him an elaborate, doctored-up, multicourse meal of gastronomic concoctions, which he probably didn’t even want. He would clearly much prefer to sit quietly and lovingly with his dear friend Martha and her sister Mary and look at them and talk with them. But it seems that Martha doesn’t even have a chance to look at Jesus, let alone converse with him, for her face is glued on her frying pans, and she even wants her sister to do the same.
We see Martha and Mary again in the gospel of St. John, when Jesus comes to their home in Bethany to raise Lazarus, their brother, from the dead, and the two have the same opposite orientations that we find in St. Luke. Martha ran out to meet Jesus, “while Mary sat in the house” (John 11:20). Martha then went back home and told her sister, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you” (John 11:28). “Then Mary, when she came where Jesus was and saw him, fell at his feet” (John 11:32), and Jesus “saw her weeping” (John 11:33).
This sitting at Jesus’ feet is the “posture of a disciple” (The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, “St. Luke”). St. Paul is an example of this posture of a disciple, for he says that he was “brought up in this city [Jerusalem]
at the feet of [the famous Rabbi] Gamaliel” (Acts 22:3). We too should be disciples like Mary, for “the Lord wants to convert us from Martha’s into Mary’s” (CA Coates, An Outline of Luke’s Gospel , page 129 in MacDonald, Commentary, page 1411).
Most Christians are not full-time contemplatives, but even so, we should try to avoid Martha’s excessive activism to the point of actually ignoring Jesus in her anxiety over her frying pans. Most Christians are like Jesus, combining his active ministry of preaching the word of God and helping other people with his contemplative orientation, where “in the morning, a great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35). Jesus, as we noted, at times spent the entire night in contemplative prayer. If he did that, I think that we should at least spend an hour each morning in contemplative prayer, for it will energize our ministry, making it all the more effective.
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