Jul 20 Sun
Whom should I imitate, Martha or Mary?
Martha was distracted with much serving. Understandably, Martha wanted to welcome the Lord properly. At a certain point, she became frustrated due to her misreading of the situation.
Mary, on the other hand, sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. She preferred to devote herself to their guest. She was just listening to Jesus’ words.
With the help of divine grace, we have to learn how to live a unity of life, which consists of the union of Martha’s and Mary’s attitudes. Our love of God should be inseparable from our apostolic zeal, and our work well done for the glory of God.
Showing a real sense of trust in her guest, the elder sister complained to Jesus, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me.”
For many centuries, these two sisters have been held to represent two rival lifestyles. Mary exemplified the way of contemplation, the life of union with God. Martha was seen as the personification of an active life of work. But the contemplative life does not consist in simply being at the feet of Jesus, doing nothing. That would be a disorder, if not pure and simple indolence.
We must find God in our daily job, showing our love for God through the exercise of the human as well as the supernatural virtues. If we lack a serious commitment to our daily work, it will be very difficult, perhaps impossible, to have a deep interior life and exercise a vibrant apostolate.
There should not be any incompatibility between ordinary work and the interior life. It is there, in the midst of daily work, and by means of it, not in spite of it, that God calls most Christians to be holy.
We are to sanctify the world and sanctify ourselves with a life of prayer that gives divine meaning to earthly tasks. This was the constant message of the Founder of Opus Dei, who taught thousands to find God in their ordinary lives. “You must understand clearly that God is calling you to serve him 'in and from’ the ordinary, material, and secular activities of human life. He waits for us every day, in the laboratory, in the operating theatre, in the army barracks, in the university lecture room, in the factory, in the workshop, in the fields, in the home, and in all the immense panorama of work. Understand this well: there is something holy, something divine hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it. There is no other way. Either we learn to find our Lord in ordinary, everyday life, or else we shall never find him.”
We need to have a unity of lift which is so vibrantly integral that work itself will lead us to be in the presence of God. At the same time, those periods we devote to prayer will help us to work better.