The Feast of St. Martha

In light of the feast of St. Martha, Brother Lawrence, a lay Carmelite from the 17th century, offers a compromise between the busy-ness of service and ministry of Martha and the consuming attentiveness and awareness of God among us of Mary-

“Our sanctification does not depend upon changing our works. Instead, it depends on doing those things for God's sake which we commonly do for our own. Brother Lawrence thought it was lamentable to see how many people mistook the means for the end, addicting themselves to certain works which they performed very imperfectly because of their human or selfish regard. The most excellent method he found for going to God was that of doing our common business without any view of pleasing men but purely for the love of God.

Brother Lawrence felt it was a great delusion to think that the times of prayer ought to differ from other times. We are as strictly obliged to adhere to God by action in the time of action, as by prayer in its time. His own prayer was simply a sense of the presence of God, his soul being at that time aware of nothing other than Divine Love. When the appointed times of prayer were past, he found no difference, because he still continued with God, praising and thanking Him with all his might. Thus his life was a continual joy.”

-Fourth Conversation from "The Practice of the Presence of God" of Brother Lawrence and friends