Saint Bruno, the priest born at Cologne and founder of the Carthusians, is remembered on this Tuesday of the twenty-seventh week in Ordinary Time, and his long silence prepares the readings of the day. Behind many restless lives lies the same difficulty: a heart drawn toward many wells, none of which ever quite quenches it. The Word gathers that heart in three steps: a call, a psalm, and a meal.
Now it happened that, while they were traveling, he entered a certain town. And a certain woman, named Martha, received him into her home. And she had a sister, named Mary, who, while sitting beside the Lord's feet, was listening to his word. Now Martha was continually busying herself with serving. And she stood still and said: "Lord, is it not a concern to you that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore, speak to her, so that she may help me." And the Lord responded by saying to her: "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled over many things. And yet only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the best portion, and it shall not be taken away from her." (Lk 10:38-42)
The first reading, taken from the letter to the Galatians, the Christian communities of central Anatolia, opens with a confession about the past of Paul, the apostle of the nations. He reminds them of his former way of life in Judaism, when he persecuted the Church of God and tried to destroy it. His zeal was real, and it was total. But it was turned in the wrong direction, by a heart that had one passion and no true object.
Then comes the turning point, and the apostle describes it without any pride. God, he writes, who, "from my mother's womb, had set me apart" (Ga 1:15), also called him by grace to reveal his Son in him. The apostle does not consult flesh and blood, and he does not hurry to Jerusalem to be confirmed; he withdraws into Arabia and waits three years before he meets Cephas, who is Peter, the fisherman of Bethsaida, and James, the brother of the Lord. Those years are not a delay but the soil in which a single call takes root.
The churches of Judea, the apostle adds, knew him only by report. They hear that the former persecutor now proclaims the faith he once laid waste, and their reaction is the last word of the passage: "they glorified God in me" (Ga 1:24). He does not claim the change as his own achievement. He lets the praise go where it belongs, to the One who gathered a scattered man into a single vocation and made him bear fruit.
The psalm answers from the other side of the same mystery. "You have known my sitting down and my rising up again" (Ps 138:2), sings David, the king of Israel and the singer of the psalms. Before any decision of ours, a gaze is already resting on us, and it has never lost sight of a single day. A heart that feels itself known in this way stops scattering itself in search of approval. It can be gathered, because it has first been seen.
The Gospel, written by Luke, the evangelist who follows Jesus on the long road to Jerusalem, leads us into a house. Martha of Bethany receives Jesus, the traveller who has no home of his own, while her sister Mary of Bethany sits beside the Lord's feet and listens to his word. Martha, carried along by her tasks, finally speaks: "Lord, is it not a concern to you that my sister has left me to serve alone?" The fault in this scene is not her service, but the division that the service has opened inside her.
The reply begins with a name said twice: "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled over many things. And yet only one thing is necessary" (Lk 10:41-42). That repetition is the voice of a friend and not of a judge, and the verdict does not touch the work itself. The Lord names the many things, because the many pull in opposite directions and leave the heart in pieces. Then he says of Martha's sister: "Mary has chosen the best portion, and it shall not be taken away from her." Mary of Bethany sits beside the source itself, while her sister runs from well to well.
Bethlehem teaches this one thing under the name of simplicity, and the simplicity it teaches is not a smaller life but an undivided heart, one axis around which scattered days fall into order. The Child laid in the manger had nothing to arrange, nothing to defend, and nothing to prove; he gave himself wholly to a single will, and that wholeness was the strength hidden inside his weakness. Mary of Bethany, seated at his feet, belongs to the same school, since she holds nothing in her hands and everything in her ear.
Today the Word of God invites us to name the many things that pull us apart, and to bring them back to the one source from which they came. Saint Bruno, the priest of Cologne who left the cathedral school of Reims for the silence of the Chartreuse, shows that this return is not a flight from the world but a deeper way of serving it.
In our homes, in our work, and in our prayer, the same invitation waits: to sit for a moment beside the Lord's feet before we begin to serve. Let us ask for a simple heart, gathered by one gaze and sent by one call, so that our many tasks may be the fruit of the one source rather than a flight from it.
Scripture text: Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV), public domain.
Prayer of the Day
Lord Jesus, guest of Martha and Mary at Bethany, you were born at Bethlehem with empty hands and an undivided will. Gather what is scattered in us, and teach us to sit at your feet before we run to serve. Know us in our rising up and our sitting down, as you knew Paul of Tarsus before his call, and make our hearts simple. Amen.
For Meditation
- Which of the many things that trouble us today could we bring back to the one thing necessary?
- Where have we mistaken being busy for the Lord with sitting at his feet?
- What would change in us if we let his gaze know us before our tasks measure us?
