In the Gospel this weekend we hear about the known story of Martha and Mary. Jesus was very close to them and their family, as Lazarus was their brother. He was visiting them one day and was teaching them. Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus, glued to Him and hanging onto every word that He had to say. Martha, meanwhile, was concerning herself with the household things, and being a good hostess to their special guest.
   The spiritual tradition of the Church has seen in this episode a personification of the active life and the interior life, where Martha represents the former and Mary the latter. By active life, I mean the duties and tasks that are necessary for us according to our state in life, and by interior life I mean our life of prayer.  Both are good and necessary, even for cloistered religious who have devoted their entire lives to prayer. But, like Jesus said, Mary chose the better part. Our interior lives are far more important than the active life.
   The tendency for us, both due to our fallen nature, and  the way our society is currently, we tend to devote ourselves completely to our tasks. As Americans we are doers. We have to go out there and do it to accomplish it. I think this can creep into our approach to the spiritual life, so that we tend to devote a lot of energy into religiously motivated activities. We can tend to fall into this, in part, because we get results a lot quicker in the active life than the interior life. It is almost instant gratification. For instance, when we are cleaning our house, we take the few hours it takes to do it, and we can sit down afterwards and relish in the fact that we have a clean house, as we can see that its clean. When we are trying to clean out the house of our soul of the filth of sin, its not as easy, as it can take days, weeks, even years to be rid of a particular sin in our life.
   As another example, we have seen in recent decades a lot of emphasis on social justice, to the point that much of our catechesis, especially to youth, is mostly about love of neighbor. Now to be sure, I am not saying that this is bad. As Christians we have a duty to others, especially the vulnerable and those in need, and so we are concerned with the unborn, the poor, immigrants, etc. And so we have raised up generations who are passionate about loving others, but are less passionate about loving God, as they don’t know Him or what our faith believes about Him.
   What I am trying to say, and what I think Jesus is trying to tell us, is that love of neighbor is not our first love. Our first love is Love of God. That is the first and greatest commandment, to use the language of Jesus from the Gospel. And the second is love of neighbor, to love others as ourselves. Our Gospel shows these two perfectly. Martha was busying herself with activities and her work, while Mary was totally focuses on Jesus. Our active life flows from our interior life. In fact, our spiritual life is what makes what we do during the day bear fruit.
   So may this Gospel help us to reorder our focus and our love, that is, may we put our energy on loving God first with all our heart and soul, even loving Him before our spouse, and then let us look to the active life and loving others.