Vigils Reading – SS Martha & Mary & Lazarus

07SN2902.DOC

                                                                                                                                              07.29.22 

How action and contemplation complement one another in our Christian life;

 a reading from the book Contemplative Prayer by Thomas Merton. ^[1]

In the monastic life one could find, according to Bernard, three vocations: That of Lazarus the penitent, that of Martha the active and devoted servant of the monastic household, and that of Mary the con­templative. Mary had chosen (said St Bernard) the Abest part,@ and there was no reason for her to envy Martha or leave her contemplation, unasked, to share in the labors of Martha. The portion of Mary is, by nature, preferable to the other two and superior to them. And one feels, reading between the lines of St Bernard, that this had to be said because it was not unknown for Mary to envy Martha. The portion of Mary was not in fact always desired by the majority.

St Bernard himself solves the problem by saying that after all Martha and Mary are sisters and they should dwell together in the same household in peace. They supplement one another. But in actual fact, true monastic perfection consists above all in the union of all three voca­tions: that of the penitent, the active worker (in the care of souls above all) and the contemplative. But when Bernard speaks of the care of souls he refers to the duty of instructing and guiding other monks, rather than apostolic work outside the cloister. Yet the need for preachers and apostolic workers was acute in the twelfth century.

For St Bernard, the contemplative life is that which is normal for the monk, it is that which he should always desire, always prefer, but the active life necessarily has its claims also. Contemplation should always be desired and preferred. Activity should be accepted, though never sought. In the end the perfection of the monastic life is found in the union of Martha, Mary and Lazarus in one person-usually such a person will be an abbot, like Bernard himself.

It must not, of course, be imagined that either St Gregory or St Bernard is always concerned with contemplation from this problematical viewpoint. Because of the large amount of activity in their own lives they do, indeed, give ardent expression to their longing for the silence of contemplative prayer. Yet they always admit that contemplation is not unknown to them in their life of apostolic labor: indeed we sense that their contemplative experience is somehow deeper and richer precisely because of the mystical graces given to them to help them to preach to others.

^[1] New York: Image Books, 1971, pp. 54-55.