Saint Martha

I've given much meditation to the "Mary and Martha" story from the gospel of Luke.  The story goes that Jesus is visiting the home of these two sisters.  Mary is seated with rapt attention at the feet of her Lord while Martha is busy cleaning the house.  Martha becomes increasingly frustrated with her sister's disinterest in the housework and eventually erupts.
 “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” Luke 10:40.  

I am very much a Martha.

Sweating, toiling, angry, irritated, lonely Martha.  She is doing what any woman of her culture and stature would do: cleaning the house for the visitor.  A male visitor no less.  Jesus Christ the Lord and Savior in her living room no less.  You better believe I would be scrubbing the brick oven and serving up home made hummus in my newest clay pot.   For this reason I have been troubled by Jesus' response to this hard-working woman.
"Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴² but few things are needed—or indeed only one.  Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Christ admonishes Martha to do as her sister is doing: sit at the feet of the Lord and listen.  He tells her that Mary has made the better choice.  How heartbreaking for Martha to be betrayed by the one Man who she thought would always be on her side.  How confused she must be to hear, perhaps for the first time, that there is more to life that housework.

For years I misunderstood Jesus' response thinking that he just had the wrong idea.  There's no way I could stop working or doing chores!  The dishes, laundry, floors, yardwork, child-rearing, cooking, and mending must be done. By me.  

But it is not the tasks that the Lord was opposed to.  It was Martha's frustration in these chores that he asked to her shrug off.  Indeed he acknowledges that she is "worried and upset by many things,"  but that there is only one thing that should truly concern her.  I am reminded of St. Therese with her "little way" of living every moment for the love of the Lord.  The Benedictine nun Sister Kathlenn Norris who writes:   

Laundry, liturgy and women's work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings.” 
― Kathleen Norris, The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Woman's "Work"

These words would have comforted Martha.  Comforted her and guided her to serve the Lord in all things that she does.  To see that serving man is not the way to serve the Son of Man.