A reading of the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke. Our lord entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. Martha had a sister named Mary who seated herself at the lord's feet and listened to his every word. Martha, who was busy with all the details of hospitality, came to Jesus and said to him, lord, are you not concerned that my sister has left me all alone to do all the household tasks? Tell her to help me.
You can get that picture. Very familiar. The lord in reply said to Martha, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and upset about many things. One thing only is required. Mary has chosen the better portion, and, she shall not be deprived of it.
And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen. This, as I say, is a very familiar story, and it is a graphic picture that goes on in many a household. Many a household.
I want to connect this with the first reading about Saint Paul in that letter to the Galatians. Notice that that pronoun I comes in there almost every sentence. Now, a great deal is made of what is called the conversion of Saint Paul. They have pictures of him being thrown from a horse, some kind of like, you know, all the Of course, there's nothing in the New Testament about him being thrown from a horse. The book of the Acts says that he was thrown to the ground.
Well, you watch a football game you'll see a lot of guys being thrown to the ground, and there's no horses involved. We talk about, as I say, the conversion of St. Paul. What was he converted from and to? I recall I I mentioned this, but it it's it's I I can't I'll never forget it.
By a perfect accident, I got someone called me and they got the wrong number. And the upshot of it was that the lady calling, in the course of the conversation that followed after we got things straightened out that she wasn't the McAllister she wanted to talk to, I used the word convert. She was had been a Jew and become a Christian. And I used the word convert. And very politely, but very firmly, she said, oh, no.
She said, I'm not a convert. I'm a fulfilled Jew. That was the first time I'd ever heard that word, fulfilled Jew. But it is so accurate. It is so absolutely accurate.
Christianity is simply the budding forth, the full bloom, the the flowering of Judaism. Christ was the Messiah. He came he was a Jew. He came from the old testament, the new testament, and created the new testament. Every day in one well, in the course of a week, every priest who recites his office says the whole psalter, that is all the psalms.
Every day, almost every day, one of the readings we use in our in the office is from the old testament. There's not a mass that we say that doesn't have some text from the old testament in it. We can talk about the bible. We do. Now we all know that that word Bible means a library, and what we call a the book, the library, is made up of a lot of books, single books.
But the New Testament and the Old Testament for the Christian is the Bible. Not the Old Testament, not the New Testament. Now come back to Saint Paul. We talk about his conversion. I question that.
He never he never had pulled himself away from God. He had been a very fervent, zealous, intelligent, well educated, vigorous, self sacrificing, generous, Pharisee. Pharisee. And now we're not drawing on our imagination here. Saint Paul is very free in telling us all about himself.
And here's this man who was dedicated to God, dedicated to God's service, dedicated to bringing men and women into the service of God, and we talk about his conversion, what was he converted to or from? He wasn't a pagan. He wasn't an atheist. He was a most fervent believer in God. There's one thing changed, and it's a great big thing, but don't forget what he was.
He saw the light. Literally, he saw the light. He saw that what he had been doing was on the wrong road. There was no question of his ultimates, but he saw that he was on the wrong road. And notice, the first name given to the early Christians were the those of the New Way, way, way, w a y.
Now the whole point of a way is to get from here to some place, some place. And in some instances, in practical affairs of life, there are many ways, and we have many arguments about this sort of thing. So what happened to Saint Paul, if you want to call it a conversion, call it anything you want, but let's get this thing straight. He was a fulfilled Jew. Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament.
He fulfills it. Some of you may have seen that documentary last night on the history of the Jewish people. Well, they see the tremendous difference between, let us say, a good a most law abiding orthodox Jew today and a and a real Christian is, one says Christ was the Messiah, and the other, the Jew says, he has not yet come. Christ was a great prophet maybe, but he was not the Messiah. That's the whole point.
Now so that of course, there was a change in Saint Paul. There was an enormous change in Saint Paul, but there wasn't the kind of change that some people think. It wasn't the orange becoming an apple. It was a fervent believer in God, becoming even a more fervent believer in God, but seeing a new way to express his loyalty and his devotion. Some people you know, I lived through the period when we had a number of very vigorous, well known, and well publicized communists, The United States becoming Catholics.
It was Fulton Sheen had a lot to do with that, good friend of mine. Now, believe it or not, some Catholics were scandalized at this. But if if you read, as I've done in the last year, the life of, say, a Karl Marx or a Prudhon or an Engels, or some of these communists USA who became Catholics, I'm not saying there wasn't a radical change, of course there was. But the point is, in some ways there wasn't. In some ways there wasn't.
You have a you have a man or and that's the reason so many times converts to Catholicism are so much more vigorous than those of us who we say have been born into the faith. You see, the thing is that many of the wonderful qualities these people had, they're not changed when they became came into the church, as we say. They're not changed. Some of the things they were seeking were our good things, wonderful things. We call them ideals.
Of course, the definition of an ideal is it's unattainable. Don't forget that. And so when some of these people who came when they came into the church, and I'll say the same things for a good honest to God atheist when he becomes a Christian. Take Mugbridge. You know, Muggeridge is a man even in his old age, as he calls himself, he thinks he's old, depends on what side you're on.
Look at Muggeridge, the vigorous man he is today, and he's almost a voice of the of the of the Orthodox Christian. That man was a good God fearing atheist for most of his life with his wife. Now, you we say he became a convert to Catholicism. What let's look if you look at that, you'll see that there were some things that didn't change. Here was a man who was fearless in the pursuit of the truth as he saw it, as he saw it.
Now, he may have had some made some mistakes along the way of how to get there, how to achieve it, or what the truth in its fullness was. But he was a man who was prepared to sacrifice and to even to die. He was a very heroic guy for what he thought was the truth. And he made a lot of sacrifices when he was a good, as I say, God fearing atheist. Over an Indian, where he went as a school teacher.
Did that change when he became a Catholic? Of course not. It only became more clear what his goal was. As he said, as Mugger says himself, for the first time in my life, I felt at home. I felt at home.
Now, I wanna come back to my dear friend Martha and my friends Martha and Mary. Because here we have the conflict, you see. And I'm not gonna resolve this. I wanna call Saint Theresa of Lisia, the little flower to you. Here's Saint Francis of Assisi, twelfth century.
Here you have let's talk about the little flower. She dies at 24, went into the convent at 15 by very special permission of the Holy Father, and lived a very only nine and a half years. Her ambition was to be a missionary, to save souls for Christ. When Assisi saw the light, and as we say, changed his life. Again, say, watch the word change.
Of course he changed, but in some ways he didn't. But when he changed, the first thing he wanted to do was go over the holy land and save the world for Christ. He got shipped back, And his life became of a sort that he had no idea it ever was going to be. He didn't plan it that way. Come back to Saint Therese of Lisia, the little flower.
Of her own insight, as far as we know, as far as all my reading goes of it, she saw that she could best be them she could be the best kind of missionary by joining a contemplative order, by going inside of those walls of amnesia into a religious community that was torn with strife, turmoil, tumult. And that's what she did because she said she he was convinced this was the way I can best be a missionary. In other words, I can be the most active I can have the most active kind of life by being a contemplative. You say, that's that's nuts. Well, it's not if we believe in prayer, if we believe in in the power of God, and if we believe, as Jesus said, without me, you can do nothing.
Nothing. Christ said that. And the word he said was nothing. Now there's a great deal of activity in the Catholic church today where we emphasize a great deal the role of Martha in everything, in liturgy, in missionary activity, and so on. But we mustn't forget the role of Mary, who sat at the feet of Jesus and listened to his every word.
In the name of the father, and of the son, and holy spirit. Amen.