I'm Martha.
One hundred percent, no doubt in my mind, all self-knowledge kicking in, I am Martha.
I'm not Mary. I'm not good at sitting at His feet. I'm not good at being prayerfully idle. I am terrible at receiving.
I need to be doing. All the time. Even when I'm praying, I like to be doing something. Praying a rosary, meditating on Scripture, reading some other spiritual reading, playing guitar and praising. Something. I can reach a point where I can just sit, but it's nearly always difficult.
That's me. I'm a Martha at heart. And while I'm slowly but surely learning more and more how to be still in prayer, I'm naturally a Martha. And that is a tendency that I've always tried to fight against. Don't be a Martha. Be more like Mary. Jesus doesn't want you to be Martha, He wants you to be Mary.
But you know what?
I don't think being Martha is as bad as we all think.
Whenever people talk about Martha, I think they're far more likely to remember the Luke 10 Martha than they are to remember the John 11 Martha. We remember His admonition of her, but we don't remember how she grew from that.
"When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary sat in the house. Martha said to Jesus, 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.' Jesus said to her, 'Your brother will rise again.' Marthat said to him, 'I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.' Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?' She said to him, 'Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.'" John 11:20-27.The Martha that we meet in John 11 is a very different Martha than we know in Luke 10.
In Luke 10, Martha is full of concern over "many things". These things, though worthy, are not as important as sitting and resting in His presence.
In John 11, Martha rises to meet Jesus. She runs to Him, while Mary stays behind. And she then goes on to make a very beautiful profession of faith, one that we have seen from very few people at this point in the Gospels. "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world." Martha recognizes who Jesus is. That's a big deal, y'all. And she couldn't have come to that if she was the same Martha that we met in Luke 10.
Martha has changed. She's grown. Instead of shutting down after Jesus' admonition in Luke 10, she took His words to heart. She re-evaluated her purpose for her 'doing'. She slowed down. She fought the battle that all of us face, the temptation to keep busy at all times. She learned to sit, to listen. To receive.
The personalities of Martha and Mary, though so often pitted against one another, are two sides of the same coin. Both are necessary. Both are beautiful. Both are indications of one who is living and growing in a life of grace.
We are God's hands and feet here on earth. We need to serve, to go out and do. Whether it's to be faithful to our studies, clean up after our children and cook for our husbands, go out and work to provide for our families, serve the poor, or participate in works of evangelization, we are called to do.
But the only way we have the grace to do all of those beautiful and admirable and necessary things is if we have an understanding of why we do them, an understanding of who we do them for. And the only way we'll be able to keep up with all that we need to do is if we take the time to rest, to sit at His feet, to be refreshed and filled by His love.
For all of her faults, Martha learned this lesson. It was this spiritual growth and maturity that enabled her to make such a beautiful profession of faith in John 11.
So yes, I am a Martha. And you know what? I'm pretty proud of that fact.
Happy feast day to all you other Marthas.
St. Martha, pray for us.
