Notes on the day of recollection with the Sisters

Day of Recollection for Sisters

“Martha, Martha” he said “you worry and fret about so many things and yet few are needed, indeed only one”

This quote comes from the story of story in Luke’s Gospel of the visit of Jesus to the sister Mary and Martha. This story shows us the two aspects of service and also being the human person. We have the Martha who is running around doing so much and being so busy and then the Mary figure who is quietly listening to Jesus.

It seems to me that both of these views are good. A lot of people class this story as the difference between the active Church and the contemplative way. It seems to the reader that one way is better than the other. But surely we need a bit of both in order to be an authentic human person and in relationship with 

Jesus. Let us take a few minutes to look at both.

THE BUSY CHRISTIAN: The Martha effect

When I often pick up the phone at the office the often the first thing that I get from the parishioner is these immortal words: Father sorry to disturb you but I know that you are very busy. Yes there are often times that my feet don’t really seem to hit the floor and I appear to be very busy. Being busy is not bad in itself. It allows us to work for the good of the Church and gives the human person purpose and also self esteem. When you are out of work for a while you realise how important it is to work and to work in community. There is always a danger in all this though. The one thing that we can do and actually often is because there is so much to do we work too hard, and this makes us fret like Martha.  IF we work to hard then we have a few problems with not be able to relax when the time comes. Time off is important to recharge the batteries but also we need to do things that give us life. And so we need to work hard and doing that too.

There are many people in today’s society that go to work eat and then sleep there is no social aspect to their day. If we are not careful as religious we can get like that too. So we need to find the word No in our vocab. We also need to find things that will give us life and enable us to grow. I remember once I was invited to a dinner with a group of teachers. As we sat down and ate what I realised was that they had no real conversation they were speaking around their job. Their social life was with each other.  So maybe it’s a good thing to get a hobby or something that gives us a little life. I like to read and also listen to music but there are many different things that we can do that can give us new perspective. These things also help us in our ministry to others.

I know and hear your thoughts. I expect that you are saying yes that great but I don’t have any time.  Well maybe we need to look at what we have to do and what we don’t have to do. An exercise to do for yourselves is to look at what I have to do and what things actually I don’t have to do.

Contemplative Prayer: The Mary effect

Over the last few years there has been a rise of programmes which look at the meaning of silence and retreat in our lives. We have a recent programme just last year called “The Big Silence.”  There are many people in today’s world where the silence is no longer in their lives. There was also a recent study to say that those who prayed lived longer. We need to live a life of interior silence even if there is a lot of noise outside. What the participants noticed on this programme was that they felt better when they had been in silence and able to cope with what the world throws at them. I know that this is very true for me. There are times when I often have not prayed in the morning that there is something odd about the day almost like not brushing your teeth. Real Prayer and silence is the lynch pin of the day of work. We could use the word prayer to see what we must always do.

P  Peace in the Lord and our spirit

R Rest in the presence of God

A Ask the Lord

Y Yearn for his answer

E Encounter with the divine

R Revive the sprit

There are of course many different way of praying and often we need to find the best one that suits us.

I don’t know about you but often there are times when we find that we are just too busy. We although trying our best don’t look after ourselves the best way that we should give time both to the work and to rest and to pray.

Often we find ourselves doing things that we don’t necessarily need to do. We can be surprised how much time we have at doing what we don’t really need to do. So what we need to do is to free up some space.  I am going to give you an exercise to do.

The first thing to do is to write down for one week or two every activity as it happen s and how long you spend on it. So for example:

0800 Morning Prayer 15 minutes

08.15 Morning Mass 30 minutes

08.45 Breakfast 30 minutes

09.15 Telephone calls

09.20 Meeting with the residents 30munites

And so on.

Then at the end of the week have a look at what you spend on different things. I am sure that you will be surprised at what time you spend on each on the things.  Ask yourselves some questions on what you do. Is it necessary? Am I missing out on what really needs to happen? Do I find myself spending more time on trivial things? 

This then can help us do the important things well. It will help us:

Set priorities’ Set goals Make more effective use of our time Maybe it will even allow us to be less tired.

When we have done this we can prioritize our day and see what things we need to do now or later.