A reflection by Abbot Theodore
These are the opening words of the Postcommunion Collect of the traditional Rite of St. Gregory for today, the Feast of St. Martha of Bethany. A simple statement of the truth of the Holy Communion which has just been celebrated and consummated in the Liturgy, the prayer hearkens back to the Gospel appointed for the day, Lk. 10:38-42. This passage is very familiar to most of us. Our Lord challenges St. Martha's anxiety over meal preparation and resentment over her sister's seeming inactivity, by pointing out the value of St. Mary's willingness to, "Be still, and know that I am God" (Ps. 46:10): "Martha, Martha, thou art careful, and art troubled about many things: But one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her."
Even among monastics, these words present a difficult, but ultimately rewarding, challenge: ministry, hospitality, and attention to the needs of others are good, but are most effective when they are the fruit of hearing the Word of God, and keeping it (cf. Lk. 11:28), rather than an expression of our own agenda. Labor and hospitality are key values in the Christian and monastic life; but I think it is safe to say that, for St. Benedict, sitting at the "feet" of God, and listening to him, constitute the true Opus Dei, the "work of God." Without these, we cannot rise above what is merely human toil, innately limited by our mortal nature.
In today's post on his Substack, Tradition and Sanity, Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, a Roman Catholic scholar of the liturgy, composer, speaker, and Benedictine Oblate (who has more than once been helpful to our monastery in regards to liturgical matters), highlights the relationship between contemplation and service. He rightly points out that even we Christians frequently, while paying lip service to the words of our Lord, would be much more comfortable if he had said, “Oh, Martha, I’m so sorry your sister is ignoring you and being lazy about helping with the work. Hey Mary, ’nuff a that gazing. Get up and get busy. We can always catch up later on.” Speaking of the Sacred Liturgy, he continues, "Yet that is the opposite of what Jesus does. He knows, better than we do, that our “active participation” is usually mostly activity and very little participation, and that we need to learn to be receptive, since this is the creature’s highest activity with regard to the divine and the supernatural. As St. Dionysius the Areopagite says, the true lover of God is the one who suffers divine things in the darkness of faith and the ardor of love — not the one who tries to act toward them or comprehend them with reason."
Professor Kwasniewsky's words remind me of an Orthodox speaker or author (Whose name I can't remember) who pointed out that when Christians say that we must "build the kingdom of God," they are missing the mark by assuming that we can somehow bring about paradise on earth, that we can make things right or give meaning to life through "good" activity. But this is merely a modern take on the ancient heresy of Pelagianism, unwittingly preached by those who, whether in social ministry or liturgical worship, behave as if what we do will bring about a utopia on earth. Aside from being a foolish hope, such a utopia could never be more than a pale shadow of the kingdom of God, founded upon Christ whose throne is the Cross and whose building blocks are the Apostles and Saints. He is the architect of his household, we are but laborers -- laborers who need to follow his designs and instructions, taking our place upon the foundations that he has laid. As one Protestant hymn rightly puts it, "...all other ground is sinking sand."
The good Professor writes that the Gospel lesson of today's Feast, "...challenges us with its presentation of Martha as the virgin who met the Bridegroom and realized she had to enroll in His contemplative school rather than enrolling Him and Mary in her cooking school." I can't speak for anyone else, but reading that was a valuable reminder for me. As an abbot, it is so, so easy for me to lose sight of this fundamental truth, so succinctly expressed in the Holy Psalter, "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it (Ps. 127:1)." I never cease to be amazed (but am all too often frustrated by) how many things loudly demand my attention, threatening to drown out the more important, but far less pushy, "best part." It makes me think of a scene from the musical, Jesus Christ, Superstar (and this is in no way an endorsement of the theology of that particular work), in which the Jesus-character is surrounded and overwhelmed by those demanding things from him and he exclaims that there is "not enough" of him to meet those needs. When I allow "many things" to trouble me and pull me away from attention to, and reflection upon, Word and Sacrament, which are the genuine work of God (and St. Benedict intends that expression to mean both what we do for God and what God does for us), I end up succeeding in neither service nor contemplation. As the saying goes, empty wells give no water.
"One might put it this way," Kwasniewsky continues, "in a world so addicted to the Pelagianism of human efforts — a world that aspires to 'build a society with liberty and justice for all, without division, without hatred, without inequalities,' with and without who-knows-what, and a ...Church that seems to be running pathetically alongside the world like a dog trying to catch up with its master — what countercultural truths do we need the liturgy to impress upon us?" He speaks here, of course, of his own Roman Church. But I don't think that we Orthodox, either as individuals or as a whole, are completely free from the same temptations, despite our love for the ancient liturgies and the wisdom of the Fathers. How could we be, when all around us the world demands action, activity, and advancement beyond what has come before? It is very hard to remain apart from a societal milieu that has seemingly forgotten to listen to any voice but its own, that rejects the very notions of truth, tradition, and inherited values?
God, who created us and in wondrous manner came among us as one of us, knows our hunger, our thirst, our weakness and our potential: he knows what food merely sustains us in our mortal state, and what food actually nourishes us to go "from strength to strength." He has provided what we truly need and has prepared for his household a most wondrous Bread, the Bread that "cometh down from heaven." Our part is to be the wheat that God hath planted and harvested, that he has ground into the flour, and which he is baking into the savory loaf of sweet savor that is his eternal kingdom. His recipe, his oven, these are the best part: if we will give ourselves to him through them, then nothing good, nothing true, and nothing beautiful will ever be taken from us, for we shall humbly and gratefully be received fully into him, who has so humbly and lovingly given himself fully to us.
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