One thing is necessary and Mary hath chosen the better part
The rich fullness of Christmas is often matched by a frantic busyness like Martha in the story of Mary and Martha, “anxious and troubled by a multitude of things” (Luke 10.41). The anxiety of Martha is literally about being too careful, too full of cares and worries. Not that there aren’t care and worries, to be sure, especially in the confusion and nonsense of the disordered world of the past two decades. But there is a wonderful counter to our fears and anxieties, of busyness and worries in Jesus’ gentle response. One thing is necessary.
What is that unum necessarium, the one thing necessary? What is “the better part” chosen by Mary? It is another Mary who shows us what is the unum necessarium, the one thing necessary, the Mary of the Christmas story, the Virgin Mary through whom God becomes man and dwells among us. This is the Mary of the Gospel reading today on what is the Second Sunday of Christmas and the Eve of the Epiphany. The one thing necessary is our contemplation of the wonder of Christ’s holy birth. We contemplate the wonder of God and of God with us just as the Magi-Kings will fall down and worship offering gifts which teach the wonder they acknowledge. Christ is God, and King, and Sacrifice.
Both stories of the Marys are told to us by Luke. “Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” What are all these things? They are “those things which were told them by the shepherds who went “unto Bethlehem” to “see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.” The Mary of the Christmas story shows us what belongs to the true response of our humanity to what is made known to us by God with us. God speaks to us in human vesture even through the unspeaking Word and Son of God in the infant Christ. What is said about him belongs to who he is for us even as the unspeaking babe of Bethlehem. An infant is one who cannot speak. Mary’s attitude is the essential attitude of faith. It is contemplative wonder at all that is said about the child Christ.
This does not deny or diminish the importance of human actions and busyness. It does however challenge us about our busyness and our practical activities by reminding us that ultimately they are grounded and have their real truth and meaning in the activity of contemplation which is the highest activity of our humanity. This redeems our everyday busyness from its frantic mindlessness and frightening emptiness.
Here is the counter to the particular forms of disorder and disarray that belong to our technocratic culture. It is without meaning and cannot provide any meaning for our humanity because a world governed by technology is fundamentally not a human world. It is a world where we turn ourselves into machines, into products, into the misuse and abuse of one another, in short, into means rather than ends. It means the loss of our humanity, albeit a self-inflicted loss through our unthoughtfulness.
The Christmas story shows us the truth of our humanity in the God made man, in the Word made flesh, and, especially, in the figure of Mary. She “preserves in her memory”, “keeping carefully in her mind” the “things that were spoken” about the child Christ. She “ponders” those things “in her heart”. This is the unum necessarium, the one thing necessary without which all our other busyness is nothing. It is a profoundly spiritual and intellectual activity but one which speaks to the whole of our being even as God has embraced the whole of our humanity in the Incarnation of Christ.
As a Church, let alone a culture, we have to learn again the unum necessariumand to ponder the wonder of God. Pondus meum amor meus, “My love is my weight,” Augustine famously says, echoing a Platonic and Aristotelian concept about the eros of our humanity, the passionate desire to know. We are defined by what we behold, by that to which we are willing to commit ourselves; in short, to attend. The Mary of the Christmas story and Mary, the sister of Martha, remind us of the real truth and dignity of our humanity. It is found in our contemplative wonder at the things of God with us. It is the unum necessarium, the one thing necessary.
It changes everything. We return to our places, our usual ways and our regular patterns, as T. S. Eliot suggests in his rich and evocative poem, the Journey of the Magi, but we return, he says, “no longer at ease”. Something has changed for us, perhaps, for ever in what we have sought for and journeyed to see. What is it? It is what we are bidden to contemplate in the Christmas mystery, things shown to us in the feasts of Christmas. Simply put, “Birth and Death”, Eliot says. “Were we led all that way for Birth or Death?” he has one of the Magi-Kings ask.
There was a Birth certainly.
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
Exactly. The contemplation of the mystery of Christ concentrates for us the mystery of our humanity as gathered into the mystery of God. The mysteries of life and death belong to the mystery of God. Mary ponders this mystery, keeping carefully in her mind all the things which were told them by the shepherds about the child Christ. We are to ponder and keep in our hearts and minds all the things spoken about and by Christ, attending to his Word and letting the love of Christ be the weight of our souls.
This is the great joy and meaning of Christmas that carries over into Epiphany. It is about attending to the things of God made known to us in the humanity of Christ.
One thing is necessary and Mary hath chosen the better part
Fr. David Curry
Second Sunday of Christmas
January 5th, 2020