One Thing Is Needful

Most of us are busy with our faith. The parish calendar is full; our name is on the sign-up sheet twice. However, the prayer we keep meaning to make room for gets crowded out by all the good things we’re doing for God. Busyness feels safe because it looks like love. It also lets us set the agenda: as long as we’re serving, we decide what the Lord needs from us. Today’s readings put two very busy people in front of us. In Galatians, Paul remembers the years when he was the most zealous young man of his generation, advancing in his religion beyond everyone his age and working tirelessly to destroy the Church of God. Then God, who had set him apart before he was born, “was pleased to reveal his Son” to him, and the first thing Paul did was go away into Arabia. In the Gospel, Martha opens her home to Jesus and runs herself ragged serving him, while her sister sits at his feet and listens. When Martha asks him to make Mary help, Jesus says her name twice and tells her that one thing is needful.

Activity can be a way of keeping God at a manageable distance. Listening hands the agenda back to him, and that’s why it frightens us more than work does.

Today is the optional memorial of Saint Bruno, a famous teacher, a cathedral chancellor, and an advisor to a pope, who kept walking away from all of it into silence. So here’s the question these readings put to you and me: when did we last stop serving the Lord long enough to hear what he wants?

The Readings

First Reading: Galatians 1:13-24

For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it; and I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned to Damascus.

Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother. (In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!) Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. And I was still not known by sight to the churches of Christ in Judea; they only heard it said, “He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” And they glorified God because of me.

Gospel: Luke 10:38-42

Now as they went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Scriptural Analysis

Paul opens with his “former life in Judaism.” Cardinal Albert Vanhoye and Peter Williamson note that the word appears nowhere else in the New Testament, and Frank Matera traces it to the Maccabean books (2 Maccabees 2:21; 8:1; 14:38), when faithful Jews resisted the Greek way of life that Antiochus IV tried to impose on them. Paul describes his past without softening it. He persecuted the Church “violently,” literally beyond measure, and “tried to destroy it.” Vanhoye and Williamson explain that the verb, eporthein (ep-or-THANE), means to ravage or annihilate, and the New Testament uses it to describe the actions of no one other than Paul (Acts 9:21). Matera adds that the ideal of zeal went back to Phinehas and Elijah, and by Maccabean times “it included a willingness to use violence against all, Jew or Gentile, who opposed the Law.” Then he states the paradox Paul is building: “One who persecuted the Church should never have been called to preach the gospel.” Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on Galatians, notices that Paul calls it my former life, “because the evil we do is from ourselves, but from God is whatever good we do.”¹

Then comes the turn: “But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me.” Both commentaries hear the prophets behind it. Jeremiah was consecrated before he was born and appointed a prophet to the nations (Jeremiah 1:5), and Isaiah’s servant was called from his mother’s womb to be “a light to the nations” (Isaiah 49:1, 6). Matera explains that the verb, aphorisas (ah-FOR-ee-sas), carries the sense of setting aside for consecrated service, the same word Paul uses in Romans 1:1. Vanhoye and Williamson stress what “through his grace” means for a man with Paul’s record: “How could a persecutor deserve to be called an apostle?” And Matera points out that “was pleased” stands near the front of the Greek sentence, so the initiative belongs to God from the first word. Aquinas distinguishes two calls in Paul’s conversion. One was the voice from heaven on the road. The other was interior, “a certain interior instinct, whereby God touches the heart to be turned to Him.”²

“To reveal his Son to me” is, in the Greek, “in me.” Vanhoye and Williamson read the phrase as the interior side of the event: “Paul experienced an inner attraction that captured him in the depths of his soul.” Matera says the revelation taught Paul that the one he had been persecuting was God’s own Son, and that Paul came to see his whole life, persecutor and preacher alike, under the sovereignty of God’s will.³ The zeal stayed. It finally had the right object.

Then Paul tells us what he did next, mostly by telling us what he didn’t do. He didn’t confer with flesh and blood or run to Jerusalem. He “went away into Arabia,” the Nabatean kingdom near Damascus. Vanhoye and Williamson admit we don’t know what he did there: “Solitary meditation? Preaching the gospel?” Matera thinks he most likely began preaching to the Gentiles. Either way, the man who had spent years running ahead of God now went where God sent him. Three years later he went up to Jerusalem “to visit Cephas,” and Matera notes that the verb implies a visit for the sake of inquiring. Aquinas says Paul went “being moved by a feeling of charity,” because he had long desired to see Peter, and he reads the fifteen days as eight plus seven, the numbers of the New and Old Testaments, spent “conversing with him on the mysteries of the Old and New Testament.”⁴ Only Thomas would find the whole Bible in a houseguest’s itinerary, and he may well be right about the conversation.

Finally, the churches of Judea, who had never seen his face, heard one sentence about him: “He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” And they glorified God because of him. Vanhoye and Williamson call it “an admirable conclusion.” Paul lets the people he once hunted vouch for his conversion, and their testimony is praise. Aquinas puts it simply: “in my conversion they glorified Him Who converted me by His grace.”⁵

We turn now to the Gospel. Pablo Gadenz notes that Luke follows the parable of the Good Samaritan, a lesson in love of neighbor, with a scene about love of “the Lord your God,” and the title Lord keeps recurring in it. Martha “received him into her house.” Mary “sat at the Lord’s feet,” which Gadenz identifies as the posture of a disciple, the same posture Paul describes when he says he was educated “at the feet of Gamaliel” (Acts 22:3). Luke Timothy Johnson adds that throughout Luke and Acts, sitting at someone’s feet acknowledges his authority, and that Mary listened, literally, to his word. Saint John Chrysostom, in the Catena Aurea (kah-TAY-nah OW-ray-ah) of Saint Thomas, says Luke places her “at His feet, to shew her diligence, stedfastness, and zeal, in hearing.”⁶ There’s zeal again, this time sitting still.

“But Martha was distracted with much serving.” Johnson explains that the verb, perispaō (peh-ree-SPAH-oh), has the sense of being distracted, and he insists Luke presents the workload as a fact: there really was too much to do. Gadenz agrees that Martha’s efforts are “all well and good,” since she is following the example of the widow of Zarephath and the woman of Shunem, who welcomed Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings 17:10-16; 2 Kings 4:8). But he sees a hint of trouble in the description. With so much to do, she’s too busy to pay attention to Jesus’ words, and her worry leads her to try to pull her sister away from him too. “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” Johnson hears an accusation against her sister dressed as a question, and notes that Martha has asked a guest to intervene in a family quarrel.⁷

Jesus answers, “Martha, Martha,” and Gadenz notes the affection in the repeated name. Then the diagnosis: “you are anxious and troubled about many things.” Johnson says the first word, merimnaō (meh-rim-NAH-oh), describes the entanglements of life in the world, and the second, thorubazomai (thor-oo-BAD-zoh-my), is colorful: “you are putting yourself in an uproar.” Gadenz recalls the parable of the sower, where Jesus warned that anxieties choke the word like thorns (Luke 8:14).⁸

“One thing is needful.” Gadenz explains that the one thing is listening to him, welcoming his message of salvation, the way good soil receives the seed. Johnson reads it as the heart of hospitality itself: the one necessary thing is attention to the guest, and “if the guest is a prophet, the appropriate reception is listening to God’s word!” Saint Augustine, in the Catena, makes sure no one reads the verse as an attack on work: “Our Lord then does not blame the actions, but distinguishes between the duties.” Mary’s portion is better because it lasts. One day, Augustine tells Martha, there will be no strangers to feed and no work to do. “Thou art yet at sea; she is in port.”⁹ Aquinas builds his teaching on the two lives on this verse. In the Summa he concludes that “the contemplative life is simply more excellent than the active,” and his last reason is the one Jesus gives: it “shall not be taken away.” Yet he insists, following Augustine, that when charity calls a contemplative to labor, “this is done by way not of subtraction but of addition.”¹⁰

Put the two readings side by side, and you will notice that the same thread runs through both. Paul and Martha both served with everything they had. Paul’s zeal was aimed at the wrong target; Martha’s was aimed at the right guest but had drifted away from him. Both were set right by the same gift: the Son revealed, his word heard. For Paul the revelation came first and the preaching after. For Mary the listening came first, and whatever the evening needed could follow.

Daily Application

The interior movement these readings ask for is to let the Lord set the agenda, and that starts with being honest about why we stay busy. Aquinas quotes Saint Gregory the Great on a type of person most of us know from the inside: “there be some so restless that when they are free from labor they labor all the more, because the more leisure they have for thought, the worse interior turmoil they have to bear.”¹¹ Busyness can be a way of never sitting still long enough to hear what God might say. The Catechism names the same thing. Many Christians, it says, unconsciously treat prayer as an occupation incompatible with everything else they have to do, so they “don’t have the time,” and some “overly prize production and profit; thus prayer, being unproductive, is useless.”¹²

Don’t fall into that trap. Make the time before you look for it. The Catechism is blunt: “One does not undertake contemplative prayer only when one has the time: one makes time for the Lord.” Tomorrow morning, before the first email and the first errand, give him fifteen minutes. Read today’s Gospel slowly, then sit with it and say nothing. If you don’t know what to do with the silence, borrow the words of the old farmer of Ars who told his holy curé about his prayer before the tabernacle: “I look at him, and he looks at me.”¹³

Saint Bruno lived the better part without ever pretending the work didn’t matter. Franciscan Media recalls that he was a celebrated teacher at Rheims and chancellor of the archdiocese. He stood with Pope Gregory VII against corrupt clergy and had his house plundered for it, and he then persuaded a few friends to follow him into the mountains of the Chartreuse, where silence, poverty and small numbers were guaranteed. When the pope called him to Rome, he went. When the pope had to flee the city, Bruno refused a bishopric and spent his last years in the wilderness of Calabria. Franciscan Media repeats the old saying that his Carthusians “never had to be reformed because” they were “never deformed.”¹⁴ Bruno served when he was asked, and he kept returning to the Lord’s feet.

Most of us will spend today back in the kitchen, and that’s fine. Gadenz notes that Lydia in Acts first listened to Paul’s preaching and then opened her home. (Acts 16:14-15) He puts the order plainly: union with God in prayer “overflows into all one’s activities, so that they bear fruit.”¹⁵ Today, sit at the feet of the Lord before you do anything else. Seek him in prayer. Your serving will be better for it, and the better part won’t be taken from you.

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Notes

1. ↑ Albert Vanhoye and Peter S. Williamson, Galatians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), 46-47; Frank J. Matera, Galatians, Sacra Pagina 9 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), 58-59; Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, trans. F. R. Larcher, OP (Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1966), chap. 1, lect. 3, at isidore.co.
2. ↑ Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 48-49; Matera, Galatians, 59, 63; Aquinas, Commentary on Galatians, chap. 1, lect. 4.
3. ↑ Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 49; Matera, Galatians, 63-64.
4. ↑ Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 52; Matera, Galatians, 64, 66, 68; Aquinas, Commentary on Galatians, chap. 1, lect. 5.
5. ↑ Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 57; Aquinas, Commentary on Galatians, chap. 1, lect. 5.
6. ↑ Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 215; Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 173; Saint John Chrysostom, quoted in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers, vol. 3, St. Luke (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843), on Luke 10:38-42.
7. ↑ Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 173-174; Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 215-216.
8. ↑ Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 216; Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 174.
9. ↑ Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 216; Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 174-175; Saint Augustine, Sermon 104, quoted in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 3, St. Luke, on Luke 10:38-42.
10. ↑ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 182, a. 1 and ad 3.
11. ↑ Saint Gregory the Great, Moralia 6.37, quoted in Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 182, a. 4, ad 3.
12. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), nos. 2726-2727.
13. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 2710, 2715.
14. ↑ “Saint Bruno,” Saint of the Day, Franciscan Media, accessed October 3, 2026, franciscanmedia.org.
15. ↑ Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 216.

Books Cited

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• Albert Vanhoye and Peter S. Williamson, Galatians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2019)
• Frank J. Matera, Galatians, Sacra Pagina 9 (Liturgical Press, 1992)
• Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2018)
• Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Liturgical Press, 1991)
• Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, four-volume edition (Baronius Press)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Latin-English edition, complete set (Aquinas Institute / Emmaus Academic, 2012)
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Doubleday / Image, 2003)