The One Thing Necessary

As a Boy Scout, I like to go camping and particularly I like backpacking. Backpacking provides an interesting challenge in that you simply can’t take all the “stuff” you might want to. You have to leave a lot of stuff behind that might be useful, but ultimately too heavy or just not necessary. Jesus is saying something similar in the Gospel today. Martha seems to get criticized for being “anxious and worried about many things.” It’s not that the things she’s doing aren’t good. It’s just that she’s doing all these “good” things while missing what Jesus calls “the one thing necessary.”

How often do we do this same thing in our lives. We are busy doing “many things” all the while loosing sight of the “one thing” we need most, namely God. Think of how much time we spend on sports, especially our kids. It’s always sad to hear that someone missed Mass because of sports. It’s not that sports are bad, but choosing sports over Mass is missing out on the “one thing” in favor of the “many.” The same is true of all the work that we adults do. Supposedly we work to provide for our families. Yet, how often today do we work so much that we don’t have time for our families. We’ve become busy with many things and lost sight of the one thing that was the point in the first place.

Let us look carefully at our lives and, like good Scouts, do what we like to call a “shakedown.” Let’s take a good look at all the stuff we’re carrying around in our pack and see if maybe we’ve got too much of a good thing in some areas. Doing as many activites as possible is like carrying everything we can in our pack. It just causes you to fall over and lie on the ground unable to move. What are some things in our life that, while good, are getting in the way of the greatest good?

St. Augustine reminds us that, “Our hearts are restless until the rest in you, O lord.” Let’s take some time to put things in balance in our life and find peace for our restless hearts. If we know that God is the “one thing necessary” then we can follow Augustine’s other great advice, “Love God and do what you will.”