The Gospel that the Church has chosen for this Feast of the Dormition and for all feasts of The Theotokos opens with the story of Martha and Mary, close friends of Jesus Christ. The story is familiar—Martha is busy preparing the food and the house for the visit of Christ, while Mary simply sat at “the feet of Jesus, and was listening to His teaching.” The activist Martha complains to the Lord that she “has been left to do all the serving alone.” The Lord consoles Martha with the words: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things. But there is need of one thing. Mary has chosen the good portion which shall not be taken away from her.”

Let’s seek to understand better how Martha and Mary and each of us can relate to the Lord Jesus Christ, in the sense of how we can balance activity and contemplation in our lives today as Christians. St Augustine preached about this Gospel passage: “What was Mary enjoying while she was listening? What was she eating? What was she drinking? Do you know? Let’s ask the Lord, who keeps such a splendid table for His own people, let’s ask Him. ‘Blessed,’ He says, ‘are those who are hungry and thirsty for justice, because they shall be satisfied.’” St Augustine is quoting from the Gospel of St Matthew, chapter 5, verse 6. He continues: “It was from this well-spring, from this storehouse of justice, that Mary, seated at the Lord’s feet, was in her hunger receiving some crumbs. You see, the Lord was giving her then as much as she was able to take. But as for the whole amount, which He was going to give at His table of the future, not even the disciples, not even the apostles themselves, were able to take in at the time when he said to them, ‘I still have many things to say to you, but you are unable to hear them now.”

Here, St Augustine is quoting from the Gospel of St John, chapter16,  verse 12, with those words: “I still have many things to say to you, but you are unable to hear them now.” What did Christ still have to say and what was Mary not yet able to hear? As St John sets out in his Gospel, Christ was to send Martha and Mary and us the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, the Helper, who guides Martha and Mary and us into God’s will for their lives and for our lives. Both Martha and Mary are serving Christ. The teacher and mentor of St Augustine, St Ambrose, Bishop of Milan has stressed that “virtue does not have a single form. In the example of Martha and Mary, there is . . . the busy devotion of the one [Martha] and the pious attention of the other [Mary] to the Word of God. . ..”

Reflecting on the words of St Ambrose, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture concludes, “The Body of Christ needs hearers as well as doers of the Word.” Thus the key message in the story of Martha and Mary is that both activity and contemplation, both service and prayerful listening to God, are important in serving the Lord. Through prayer, the Lord can guide each of us as we learn how to balance activity and contemplation in the midst of changing challenges in our lives.

The conclusion of this Gospel, from chapter 11, verses 27 and 28 is often misinterpreted. The verses read: “A woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to Jesus, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!’ But He said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!’” St. John Chrysostom has pointed out that Christ is not “repudiating His mother” but stressing that she has already been blessed and that her life can bless all of us who “hear the word of God and keep it.” The precise words that St John Chrysostom preached were: “Behold, a wide path has been marked out for us, and it is granted not to women only, but men also.”

The “wide path” that The Theotokos opened for humanity by giving birth to Jesus Christ is the possibility of hearing, understanding and following the Word of God. Each of us can join our own wills to the will of Holy Mary when she said to the Archangel Gabriel: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” The young teenage Holy Mary who spoke those words did indeed follow the Word of the Lord throughout her life. At her Dormition—her falling asleep, dying a natural death—there is an Orthodox tradition that all the disciples except for Thomas were gathered around The Theotokos for her death and burial. When Thomas arrived a few days later—having missed the death and burial of the Theotokos—he wished to see her one more time and convinced the other apostles to open her tomb. It was then that the apostles discovered her body was no longer present and had ascended from earth to heaven.

At times in our lives, we may feel, like Thomas that we have missed something important, something very important in linking our lives to the lives of Jesus Christ and the Theotokos. However, that sense of missing out, that sense that we could have done better in living a Christian life is quite misleading. The Lord has His purposes and can guide us into the fullness of the Christian life He wants for each of us—the fullness of the Christian life that we each seek. We can all pray the Troparion of the Forefeast hymn of the Dormition:

Dance with joy, O peoples!

Clap your hands with gladness!

Gather today with fervor and jubilation;

Sing with exultation.

The Mother of God is about to rise in glory,

Ascending from earth to heaven.

We ceaselessly praise her in song as truly Theotokos.