In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus at the home of Lazarus, where his two sisters are doing apparently very different actions. It would seem a very familiar scene in any household especially at the holidays- one person is stuck doing all of the work, while others sit and visit and do nothing to help. In our account, Martha for her part does what is customary; she is so absorbed in making sure everything is perfect- actively attending to so many details- is there enough bread? Have we prepared enough meat? (On and on).

Mary, on the other hand, it would seem, sits passively in silence doing nothing at the master’s feet. Mary is not helping Martha with all the chores. Now, out of justice, we might think that Jesus should say to her- “Mary please help your sister-Martha, she is anxious and worried about so many things;” but he does not. Jesus instead turns to her sister and says, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about so many things and yet few are needed, indeed only one. It is Mary who has chosen the better part; it is not to be taken from her.”

After we recover from our natural shock from Jesus apparent failure to act in justice, we have to consider what all of this means. For the Fathers of the Church this passage has been seen as showing the two essential aspects of Christian life-prayer and service; Mary representing prayer; and Martha-service to others. Now often, these two aspects are seen in opposition to one another; however, nothing can be further from the case; they are intricately bound.

Every Christian, even the most recluse hermit, even the pope, must live these two aspects of the Christian life- prayer and service; both are needed to authentically follow the Master. Now most of us understand the need for service. But the prayer dimension, and in particular the silent contemplative prayer type, is often put in second place or even omitted in our world today (not to mentioned mocked). For many, prayer, especially silent contemplative prayer is seen as being merely passive-doing nothing, accomplishing nothing. But the fact is, we can only live lives of faithful service to our brothers and sisters when we first come to Jesus in prayer, listen and seek a loving Union with the Creator. Contemplative prayer then is primary; it is the best part. We must first come before we go, we must first be filled with God’s love before we can share that love with others. IN the gospels, before Jesus ever said go to His disciples, He first said come, come to me.

Why is that prayer, and again especially contemplative prayer, which could be defined as sitting silently at the feet of Jesus in order to listen to His words, why is prayer so undervalued in our world today and dare I say in our Church today? Why has it become secondary to so call active service, or even omitted. I believe one of the main reasons prayer is undervalued or left out of the Christian life is time. We all have such packed calendars. Modern technology may make the organization of our packed calendars easier, but all we have accomplished is to just put more things into our day. We become absorbed by the clock. We have a clock on our wrist, on our cell phone, Blackberry, or IPhone. Clocks are everywhere to remind us that time is short, so we must get busy, busy, busy. As we sit in the traffic jams, we are scheduling and checking email, multitasking, and yes, texting. We are frustrated because we are late to a meeting-(the person in the other vehicle can be seen not as a human being but merely as an obstacle getting in our way). We have to finish everything in order to pick up the children from school and get them to soccer practice and then on to their music lesson. Somewhere in there, we’ll try to grab some fast food and chow it down as we drive. We have been trained to think that we only have a good day when we accomplish a great deal. I think this is a pretty accurate description of our hectic life these days.

We have the temptation as well, to bring this busyness into our spiritual life. We are rushed for time, so when we look at where time will be spent in the presence of our God in intimate prayer, we say to ourselves, “I Only have a couple of minutes to pray today- I’ll try to get some more time later, but today, I need to accomplish something.” The ‘more time later’ however, never seems to come, and eventually we become too busy for even a couple of minutes, prayer can be omitted altogether. And if we do find time for prayer, our minds can be filled with so many anxious concerns that our prayer life too, becomes just a matter of getting things done instead of a matter of intimate love with the divine Lover-Jesus—we can end up saying many things but never really sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to His words; we do all the talking.

And so what are we to do? The fact is we can never really be too busy for prayer, never too busy to sit at the feet of Jesus and look at His face, never to busy to sit silently as well in order to hear his voice. So first, our minds have to undergo a conversion about time. Love never counts time when together, only when apart, for those in love can’t wait to be together again and when they are together they never want time to end. Time spend with Jesus is not wasted time. Time with our Lord is the most loving and indeed most effective and active way of living the Christian life; it is far from sitting before Jesus doing nothing—being with our beloved is never doing nothing. It is a matter of being, not doing; to sit in the presence of the one we love and attempting to united ourselves with them in love; yes, speaking to them but at times saying nothing just staring into their eyes. This, THIS is the most active activity—contemplative activity.

Second, we must make changes in our calendar. Personal prayer should be a scheduled event in our day, we should add it to our smart phone’s calendars. Our day should start firstly with prayer on our knees, even before we get dress and then we should end our day with a prayer. In between, we need to schedule time for prayer, perhaps a rosary walk, stopping into the church a few minutes, even attending daily Mass. We need to be still too whenever we can and know that He is God and listen to Him.

We also need to practice the awareness that God is with us all day long even as we work, play and relax; we should pause before each new activity of the day and place ourselves in the presence of God, that is realize that God is presence with us as we fulfill faithfully our daily tasks offering them to Him in love through the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Our ordinary daily tasks then become a prayer in of themselves, they then bear great spiritual fruit in our lives and in our world—they become a way to the Lord for us and for others, instead of getting in the way.

Next, speaking of the Holy Mass, we need to make Holy Mass the most important event of our lives, revolving our lives around it, not the Mass around our lives. In other words we need to put the Mass always first. To help us we should consider putting in extra time for Mass on Sunday- arrive early in order to properly prepare for Mass and spend a few minutes afterwards in Thanksgiving to God for being giving the awesome privilege and blessing to even have been able to be present at Mass, not to even mention receiving God Himself into our body and soul.

At Holy Mass we also must be careful not to be too much of a Martha, having to “do” something. The highest form of activity at Mass again is not doing something or even saying something, but in being… sitting at the feet of Jesus and silently allowing ourselves to bask in the rays of His love for us. We accept the offering of His love and then we try with the Virgin Mary’s help to offer our love in return. Holy Mass should be about the action between two hearts who are growing in love with one another-who seek union with one another; our heart and Jesus’ heart; cor ad cor loquitur--heart speaks silently to heart. We should look into His eyes by staring at the Eucharist and know that He too is looking into our eyes with unfathomable love.

By our loving unrushed presence at Mass we are like Martha and Mary welcoming into our home-Jesus, who is truly on the altar and in the Tabernacle. When we are before the Holy Eucharist we are literally, not figuratively, but literally at the feet of Jesus. (To help us better realize the infinite value of the Mass and the Eucharist, we could also come before the tabernacle outside of Holy Mass to sit at the feet of Jesus, to experience His loving Gaze and be filled with His Love and Mercy and in the silence hear His voice in our hearts. In doing this, we are choosing the better part.

The more you and I make time for Jesus by intimate prayer in our daily lives, the more we make time for Jesus by coming into His true physical presence in the Holy Eucharist at Holy Mass and whenever we can, at least one hour a week outside of Holy Mass, the more we are able to experience his tangible presence in our lives and in our everyday relationships, the more we experience his Divine love acting in our world. By being in His presence we experience the power of His Divine Love and receive the bliss that it promises and then the more we become transformed and empowered to in service share more fully that bliss with those in the world around us. Contemplative prayer must always be primary in our life. Jesus will reward the generosity of our time spend with Him in love, just has he rewarded Martha and Mary’s time with Him, by later raising their brother Lazarus from the dead. Jesus can never be outdone in generosity.

As we finish this time of prayer, let us ask the Blessed Virgin to grant us the diligence of Martha as well as the awareness of the true presence of God of Mary. Let us daily as individuals and families pray her Holy Rosary. The Rosary is a Eucharistic Prayer. In it we ask the Blessed Mother to help us in our busy and hectic lives make time to pray and to sit silently at the feet of Her Son in contemplative prayer. The Rosary is a prayer to lead us to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus in order to allow the Power of Its Love to be active in our daily lives and in our World; This is the greatest service we can perform. Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Pray for us. Amen.