The short story of Mary and Martha occurs only once in all of the Gospels. And yet throughout the history of the Church is has attracted much attention. It has been taken to be a commentary on the interplay between the active and contemplative life, with Martha representing the active life of service and Mary representing the contemplative life of prayer and devotion.

As such, the questions it poses for us in the modern world are still crucial to our personal and spiritual well-being: How are we to find true rest and happiness? Where and how are we to direct our time and energy? What role does prayer play in the midst of a busy and distracted world?

The story begins with Mary sitting at the feet of the Lord listening to his teaching whilst Martha serves. After a while, Martha grows exasperated and asks Jesus to rebuke her sister for not helping, to which Jesus replies with the immortal words, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her”.

We must attend closely to the words of Jesus here because, as he almost always does, he subverts our expectations in his desire to lead us to true life.

Action and Anxiety

In the character of Martha and with only a few words, the author Luke describes our modern condition.

We are told that she is ‘distracted with much serving’. The Greek word from which we derive “distracted”, perispao, has several meanings including distracted, pulled away, overburdened. All of this implies a centre from which Martha has been removed, something that is taking her away from where and from what she should be.

Later on, Christ tells her that she is anxious and troubled about many things. The Greek here for ‘many things’ here is pollawhich indicates a multiplicity of concerns that replace the one thing that is necessary.

Before we talk about that one thing that is necessary consider what is being said here: Martha is being removed, taken away from where and from what she should be by a multiplicity of things. Instead of having a singular focus, her focus is multiple. She has many thoughts swirling through her head, her imagination is filled with, in the words of St Augustine, ‘a confusing crowd of phantasms’. Her body is tense. Her nerves are raw. Her teeth are set on edge. She is, in the words of one contemporary author, trying to make ‘a millimetre of progress in a thousand different directions’.

Is this not a portrait of our modern state? Encouraged by our technology to redirect our focus every two seconds, moving from email to email, from social media post to social media post, from channel to channel, desperately seeking interest, enjoyment, validation?

Christ tells Martha that she is “anxious” and “troubled”. This word for “anxious”, merimnao, is used elsewhere in the Gospel sin Matthew when Christ gives the Sermon on the Mount: “Therefore I tell you: do not be anxious about your life”. Whatever else Christ wants for Martha, and therefore for us, he does not want us to be anxious, full of care and worry for the things of this world.

Although it is certainly true that Martha is doing a good thing – even a very great thing – by welcoming Christ into her home and serving him, she has nevertheless allowed herself to be overcome by anxiety through activity and she has missed the one thing that is necessary.

She therefore serves as a warning, a question and a calling to us. In the midst even of our good intentions, how can we find another way?

The Good Portion

In contrast to her anxious service, Christ tells Martha only one thing is necessary and that, in sitting at his feet and attending to his teaching, Mary has chosen the better part or the good portion and that it will not be taken away from her. Let’s consider these words.

Firstly, only one thing is necessary. In other words, what is truly necessarily is not a multiplicity of things. Nor is a particularly complicated concept to grasp. What is necessary is the presence of Christ and this alone.

But this naturally raises the question: necessary for what? And the answer is necessary for whatever it is we are all looking for? What, after all, is the point of all of our activity, our busyness, our service? Surely it is a searching and a striving after life, joy and happiness. One thing is necessary for this, therefore, and that one thing is Christ.

Notable thinkers throughout the Christian tradition can provide us with examples here. In his radical autobiographical work, St Augustine recounted his search for life, joy and happiness not in God but in the things that God had made. ‘I rushed upon the beautiful things you had made,’ he wrote as a prayer to God, ‘They held me far from you, those things that would not exist if they did not exist in you.’ As he continued to search for joy, he came upon the gradual realisation that the joy he was seeking for was really the same thing as a search for the Christian God. He had been hearing echoes only, seeing traces of that life, joy, beauty and goodness that is God in his creatures. And, yet, when he came to know the source of these traces, he concluded in the famous words, ‘You have made us for yourselves, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you’.

The point I am trying to make here is that we are all seeking the same thing: namely, happiness, joy and life, what is good, what is true and what is beautiful. But it is the good wayfarer who understands that the source of all of these things is ultimately God himself and not the things that he has made. This is the mistake that Martha made: although God was present to her, in her home, she allowed herself to become distracted and therefore lost sight of the one thing necessary.

The Final End

Notice I said earlier that Martha’s service was a good, perhaps even a great, work. This is indeed true and we must be careful to promote and not disparage works of Christian charity and love. But contemplation, love for God and the joy of his presence, is the highest and final end of mankind. Not only do we find our home in God but this home is our eternal destiny. And this surely must be the meaning of Christ’s words, when he says that Mary has chosen the better part “which will not be taken from her”.

All of our works and activities will cease eventually. But what will never cease is our relationship with God, for whom and with whom we are destined to live eternally. The author of the fourteenth century mystical text, The Cloud of Unknowing, puts this especially well when he observes that Mary’s ‘perfect stirring of love that begins on this earth is of a piece with that which will last without end in the bliss of heaven, for they are one and the same’.

Too Heavenly Minded?

As I speak of these things, you might be reminded of a criticism that is sometimes made to the effect that a person is too heavenly minded to be of earthly use. What is meant by this is that a person is so busy thinking of God, heaven and notions of transcendence that he cannot in fact apply his mind to any practical and therefore useful considerations.

And yet, nothing could be further than the truth, for in the economy of God it is precisely those who are most heavenly minded that are of most earthly use. This truth is captured particularly well by Cardinal Robert Sarah in his wonderful book The Power of Silence. He speaks of a spiritual “pedagogy”, by which he means a pattern that Jesus lays out for us:

Friends, as Christians what we have to offer the world is Christ. Above everything else this is what we have to offer. And our acts of service are ultimate to facilitate this sharing of Christ. But the fact is that we cannot share Christ if we do not know him in our lives and if, instead, we have only an interior attitude similar to that which is spoken of by Cardinal Sarah: panic, fear, inattention, annoyance, and anxiety. The world is filled with people whose restless activity inculcates such traits and it does not need more of them.

Another way of saying this is that what the world really needs is holiness and holy people who radiate the grace, peace, joy and love of Christ. And this holiness cannot come about unless we first sit at the feet of Christ and are radically transformed by his presence. And it is from there and that place that we can move into the world and offer to the people in it our acts of love and service. But the fact that we have sought Christ first and before, and that we are people who continually seek the face of Christ…this will make all the difference.

Come to me…

Our story today tells us therefore that we are to be like Mary first and foremost and not as Martha. Mary was like one who heeded Christ’s words, “Come to me all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gently and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls”. This rest is necessary for our acts of love and service and it is the eternal joy to which we are invited, the joy which we can taste now, even in this passing life.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.