Mary and the Good Samaritan

The Gospel of Luke, that wonderful evangelist who was so human--the scribe of the meekness of Christ, as he has been called--tells the story of the Good Samaritan. Immediately afterward, he tells the story of Martha and Mary. In other words, you love the story of the Good Samaritan and you're going out on the highways, are you? You're going to care for all these wounded people that you pick up, and you're going to take them to a hospice? Try, but read on. Do not become too busy, otherwise you might be like Martha, preparing a thousand-island salad, gathering the salad from each of the thousand islands. You have to take time out to be like Mary and sit at the feet of Christ. This is the truth. Too often we have presented this as the conflict between age groups, of young and old. It is not a conflict of age groups any more than it was on the Mount of Transfiguration. We cannot always remain on the mountain. We have to go down into the valley. There is the ecstasy, but there also are the problems. The two have to be kept together.