Martha and Joseph

Today is the feast of Saint Martha. She was the one who complained about doing all the work in preparation for Our Lord's visit to her house while her sister Mary was just sitting there listening to Jesus speak.
 
Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said,
“Lord, do you not care
that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?
Tell her to help me.”
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.”

It is important to remember that Our Lord did not tell Martha that what she was doing was bad. ( Even though this passage does not put her in the best light, Martha did, in the end, become a Saint! )  Jesus only said that what Mary was doing was better.  In other words, action is not bad, but contemplation is better than action.   Seeking to serve the Lord by doing certain deeds is not at all a bad thing, it is just incomplete. 

I kind of think there was a little of that active/ contemplative interplay in the life of Joseph and Mary. (The Blessed Mother and Martha's sister Mary are not the same, just to be sure no one is confused, they are two different Mary's.)  Mary, I think, was the contemplative one; Joseph, as the title Saint Joseph the Worker suggests, was the worker.   I find it interesting that at the end of the Infancy Narrative in Luke's Gospel, Luke writes "..and his mother kept all these things in her heart."   He does not say anything about Joseph the father doing the same.  Here is another point to back up my theory. We see statues of Joseph with a saw and other tools; we never see statues of Mary with cooking utensils, do we?  Now, do not get me wrong, I am sure Joseph prayed a lot, and I am sure Mary worked a lot.  However, I think Joseph's inclination was to act, Mary's inclination was to "ponder", or meditate, or pray, whichever term you propose.  This is just speculation again on my part, this is not doctrine.
I think that while Joseph had this inclination, he probably handled it better than Martha did.  He probably did not complain when he saw Mary at prayer.  He probably admired her, or even stopped himself to pray with her.
Just as Martha needed her sister Mary, and vice versa, so Joseph needed his wife Mary, and vice versa.  The active and the contemplative need each other, and the world needs them both.

The Church's teaching on the Christian life is so beautiful because it balances both the contemplative and active dimensions.   Another way to look at it is that Her teaching balances the spiritual and the moral life. Work is good, but we must not , as is said, work so hard that we forget the Master of the Work.  Prayer is good, but we must not spend all day in prayer, and neglect our daily responsibilities.  We must live with our eyes on heaven, but our feet must be firmly on the ground (unless we go into spiritual ecstasy, but that is for a chosen few only, lol).  Living this balanced life will prevent us from becoming activists.  At the same time, it will prevent us from withdrawing from this world and ignoring its (and our own) problems.  These are the kind of people the world needs; people who can balance action with prayer, who are not busy-bodies, but who are not overly spiritualized, either, that they forget the temporal.
It needs more people like Saint Joseph.  

Let's be that kind of person.


Saint Martha, pray for us
Joseph, Spouse of the Mother of God who is the model of prayer for all of us, pray for us