The Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary

A Reflection for the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary

The Lord said to her in reply, “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.”  (Lk 10:41-42)

Find today’s readings here.

Today’s Gospel lesson: Sometimes we are Martha. Sometimes we are Mary.

I often think of Martha and Mary as two sides of the woman I’ve become. Martha is the woman my mother tried to raise me to be: a wife-ready woman, skilled in the feminine service arts of cooking, cleaning, sewing, baking and laundry. My brother was not trained in any of these roles. My poor mother didn’t know what to do with a daughter who was not good in any of these areas, who was more in tune with her Mary side. I was a reader, a writer; a socially-awkward odd duck in my mother’s eyes.

As an adult I’ve managed to merge my Martha and Mary halves into a whole. I’m an adequate wife and mother thanks to my mom, and an adequate listener at the feet of Jesus thanks to my mentors. I believe the Martha and Mary story we hear today reminds us that we need to honor both the Martha and Mary sides of ourselves. 

Note that Jesus does not tell Martha to stop cooking and join Mary at his feet. Jesus knows they have to eat. Someone has to make dinner: That’s Martha. But if we find ourselves acting all Martha and no Mary, which I am sometimes guilty of when I am too concerned with getting stuff done and“worried about many things,” we lose our awareness of “the one thing,” which is God. 

Still, the contemplating and the cleaning both need doing. Perhaps Martha needed a gentle reminder to be still and sit with Jesus after dinner while Mary did the dishes; to know that the “better part” that Mary had chosen was still available to her.

When I was a young mother of four kids and in the thick of being “worried about many things,” I read about “sequencing,” the idea that we women could have it all, just not at the same time. This turned out to be true. The wide world of possibilities awaited me once my kids were grown. Perhaps Martha and Mary represent a kind of spiritual sequencing: The holy tasks of cooking and quieting needn’t limit us, and one needn’t exclude the other. Perhaps we can embody the better parts of both Martha and Mary, just at different times. We don’t have to be super-women. We do have to go about our work with love, which maybe is the “one thing” Jesus wants from us.

(That’s my best apology, Mom.)