Priorities

THE gospel story of the sisters Martha and Mary (cfr Lk 10-38-42) is classic for its great lesson in priorities. Both did good things, but one got her priorities wrong.

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and upset about many things,” Christ said. “Only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better portion and she shall not be deprived of it.”

It’s a lesson that, despite its age, continues to be new to many people even up to now. Even many priests can fall victim to this predicament. And I can readily understand why. Given their—our—peculiar situation, we are quite prone to this problem.

We do lots of things from way early in the morning to way late at night. Twenty-four hours don’t seem to be enough for the day. Aside from the daily assignments and routine, we are at the beck and call of everyone—just about for any request like confessions, visits and anointing of the sick, Masses at wakes, blessings, etc.

That’s part of the reason why priests are asked to lead celibate lives. It is to make us most available for anyone and for anything. We ought to be ready to minister as requested and to go anywhere.

And so, with this very active lifestyle, the possibility is quite high for us to fall into activism. That’s when we can start neglecting the most basic things like prayer, care and nourishment of our spiritual life. Even our physical health can suffer.

What’s worse is when we unconsciously get into the fix of some obsessions. That’s when we get into a loop, doing our own thing and not God’s, generating energy from our own self and not from God. This can only end in disaster.

Because of these obsessions, many priests can get into unrestrained social action, or get immersed into partisan politics, or to be involved in other temporal affairs not meant for us as in making business, etc.

Another sign of this grip of obsession on us is when we start losing the sense of team work, when we prefer to do things alone, and not to be told anything by anyone, nor to report and account things to someone. We seem to confine ourselves to a certain area restricted to others. It has nothing to do with creativity and originality.

Cases like this are getting rampant, sad to say. They all point to a lack of priority in our attitudes and actuations. We need to see to it that we don’t get lost in the flow of events during the day, and to avoid getting tied down by the subtle threads of self-affirmation.

Thus, a certain detachment in our activities is advisable. It’s the detachment that’s meant to prevent us from being swallowed up by earthly things, thereby losing our contact with God. It’s good that from time to time during the day, we check ourselves if this detachment is still working or we are now sinking slowly into our own world.

When the interest for prayer and other spiritual activities like making sacrifices, going to the sacraments, developing and exercising the virtues wanes, it’s proof that something is wrong and some rectification is needed. Most likely, there is lack of priority involved.

When we experience the surge of irritability, when being nice and patient becomes very hard to do or when we become vulnerable to envy and resentments—these can be symptoms we are losing the proper priorities.

For sure, we have to make use of time, since there simply are just too many things to be done. In the life of Christ with his disciples, there are many references of how busy they were in their preaching such that they hardly had time to eat.

This will always be the situation of those who wish to follow Christ closely. Heroism up to being squeezed like a lemon or even up to death is to be expected.

Yet, priorities should be observed, and there will be times when we have to say “no” to certain things even though they too are good. And we just have to say “no.”

Again, these are easier said than done. To be prudent in making the right judgments, when to say “yes” and when to say “no”, is most tricky. It would be good that everyone avails himself of a spiritual director or confidante who can help him.

In the end, this confidante can only be Christ. We need to be friends of Christ, just as Martha and Mary were of him.