Mystical Word: 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C
Readings for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Genesis 18:1-10a | Colossians 1:24-28 | Luke 10:38-42
What is the one thing necessary?
The alarm goes off in the morning and my mind races through my to-do list. I need to finish the laundry, iron my shirts, take a shower, and make my breakfast all before my kids wake up. Then, I have to get them ready for the day and get dressed for work. All the tasks awaiting me at work have not yet entered my mind. Life is busy! How many things do we have on our “to-do” lists? What chores need doing? When do I have to pick up the kids? Will I have time to cook dinner? Did I call that person back? Did my check bounce? Will I beat the traffic? Sometimes it seems like the more we get done, the more hectic life gets. No wonder stress is a big health concern.
Busy-ness seems to be Martha’s problem in today’s Gospel reading. Whereas Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and listens to him, Martha feels worried about everything she has to do in the kitchen. Martha sees Mary just sitting there and not helping in the kitchen. We might sympathize with Martha, especially if we have ever been doing the bulk of work while someone who is supposed to help us does not. Martha complains to Jesus that Mary is not helping her. Jesus, though, gently chides her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”
Jesus accurately names the problem: anxiety about many things. He also names the solution. There is need of only one thing. This “one thing needed” – the unum necessarium – is to pay attention to God, which is symbolized by Mary listening to Jesus. Simple silent attentiveness to God, or contemplative prayer, is all that is necessary. Notice, Jesus does not say serving in the kitchen is unnecessary. Service and loving one’s neighbor are both still essential to the Gospel, but we must not forget we love our neighbor with God’s love. We serve the needs of the moment with an interior awareness of God. Such is the Gospel life.
We are all in Martha’s situation today. A distracted life is the norm. We get so preoccupied with what we have to do that we forget to be. Sr. Ilia Delio writes, “The distracted mind easily fragments into a thousand unrelated thoughts and feelings.” She continues, “Life is increasingly fragmented as we are doused with copious amounts of information in our wired world. We are restless, bored, impatient, and inattentive; for all practical purposes we are living in exile and are completely unaware of our disconnectedness” (Making All Things New). We live distracted lives, fragmented and dispersed among a thousand things.
We need to return to the simplicity of the one thing needed, which is contemplation. The monastic tradition offers us a great deal of wisdom in this regard. Monks were, initially, all lay people who simply desired God and wanted to pray without ceasing. They wanted contemplative prayer. The whole of monastic wisdom might be summed up in the following from John Cassian: “The goal of every monk and the perfection of his heart incline him to constant and uninterrupted perseverance in prayer and, as much as human frailty allows, it strives after an unchanging and continual tranquility of mind.” The whole purpose of being a monk is to pray. All they want to do is to pay attention to God all the time. This requires being aware of what drags their hearts away from God. They need to be aware of what they perpetually pay attention to instead of God. These are distractions. Knowing the distractions, they can break the spell cast over their hearts. They do so by praying when these distractions come into their lives. I suggest we do the same. When we get tremendously busy, we stop, breathe, and root ourselves in God by simple silent presence. The more we pray, the better it goes, and the deeper our communion with God. Then, when we feel anxious and distracted, we are not overwhelmed but ready to sink into the joyful love of God. That is all we need.