LET’S go over again the story of the sisters Martha and Mary with Jesus as
their guest (Lk 10,38-42). It’s a beautiful story from which we can derive
precious lessons on the place of prayer in our life immersed in work and all
kinds of earthly concerns. These lessons are most relevant today, marked as it
is by rapid, often mindless activism.
Both sisters were of very good heart. Close friends of Jesus together with
their brother Lazarus, they must have been excited to have Christ in their
home. Martha went about going through the details of hospitality. Mary, on the
other hand, just sat down near Jesus, listening to him.
At a certain point, Martha complained that her sister appeared to be doing
nothing and was not helping her. She said it with the confidence of a close
friend. And so Jesus, also as a close friend, confided to her a very important
home truth which contains the famous words that have reverberated through the
ages.
“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.”
These words definitely tell us that whatever our concerns are, however urgent
and important they seem to be, prayer or conversation with God still holds
priority over them. And that’s because without prayer, all these concerns,
however they may be resolved, would have no value if not infused with prayer.
Prayer is the very breath and heartbeat of our spiritual life, of our life with
God which is how our life ought to be. It’s prayer that brings us and all our
concerns to God. Without it, we would just be drifting in our own world, often
going in circles and definitely going nowhere, though we may have the sensation
we are going to different places.
Our life is never just a physical, biological, personal, family, professional
or social life. It is a life in constant relation with its Creator, and that
relation is made alive by us if we correspond to God first of all through
prayer.
So no matter how pressured we are, no matter how tight and hectic our time is,
we have to find a way to engage God in some moments of intimate conversation,
talking and listening to him, so we can always be with him the rest of the time
while we are working and going through whatever concern and business we have
during the day.
In this, we need to develop the proper attitude and skills. Our disposition
should be driven by faith, hope and love of God who is actually everything to
us. We have to strengthen this truth of faith about God being everything to us
because this is the very foundation of our life of prayer, our life with God.
We have to be wary of our all too human tendency to be easily swayed and held
captive by the impulses of our instincts and feelings, and by some sense of
what is practical and convenient that displaces our more basic need to pray.
Due to this attitude, we end up falling into activism and into developing a
general culture where we think our goal is just a matter of some natural and
human good, measured in terms of economics, politics, social welfare, etc.
These yardsticks only have a temporal shelf life, at best. They can never bring
us to our supernatural goal of being with God for eternity as we are meant to
be.
This, sadly, is a very common phenomenon which we need to address and rectify.
The impulses of our instincts and feelings, our sense of the practical and
convenient are not bad in themselves. What makes them bad is when they prevent
us from praying.
What makes them bad is when they confine us to have a merely worldly vision of
things, notoriously narrow and shallow-minded, marked only by knee-jerk
reactions and by self-interest instead of the common good.
Yes, to tackle these tendencies of ours, we need a lot of self-discipline and
hopefully other structures conducive to developing and sustaining our life of
prayer, like the family, school, our network of friends, etc.
Prayer actually enables us to see beyond the here and now. It leads us to find
meaning and even joy in every situation we find ourselves in, including the
unpleasant and difficult ones.
Prayer can show us the inherent beauty of everything, including our suffering,
because we will see them the way God sees them.
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