Paul's account of his reversal — from zealous persecutor to proclaimer — is often read as a conversion story. The episode of Martha and Mary is often read as a lesson in hospitality. But what if both passages describe the same interior event: the moment when accumulated doing finally yields to a different quality of receiving? These reflections draw on the esoteric interpretive tradition associated with Maurice Nicoll, while pursuing lines of thought that belong to no single school — only to the question of what it means to undergo genuine inner change.
First reading
From the letter of Paul to the Galatians — Galatians 1:13-24
You have already heard how I once lived within the Jewish faith — how I persecuted the church of God beyond all measure, and laid it waste.
I surpassed many of my own age among my people in devotion to that religion, burning with a fiercer zeal than any for the traditions handed down from my ancestors.
But when God, who set me apart from my mother's womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might proclaim him among the nations, I did not turn at once to any human counsel, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me. Instead I withdrew into Arabia, and afterward returned to Damascus.
Only after three years did I go up to Jerusalem to meet Peter, and I remained with him fifteen days.
Of the other apostles I saw not one, except James, the brother of the Lord.
As for the things I am writing to you — mark this well — before God, I speak no falsehood.
From there I traveled into the regions of Syria and Cilicia,
and I remained unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that belong to Christ.
They had only heard it said: "The man who once hounded us now proclaims the very faith he once sought to destroy."
And because of me they gave glory to God.
Gospel
From the Gospel of Luke — Luke 10:38-42
As they were making their way, he came to a certain village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.
She had a sister called Mary, who settled at the Lord's feet and listened to his word.
But Martha was pulled in every direction by the demands of serving, and she approached him and said, "Lord, does it not trouble you that my sister has left me to do all the work alone? Tell her to come and help me."
But Jesus answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and unsettled over so many things, yet only one thing truly matters. Mary has chosen the better portion, and it will not be taken from her."
— Interpretation —
Let us sit with these two readings together, because they illuminate one another in a way that is easy to miss if we take either one at face value.
Paul, writing to the Galatians (1:13–14), describes a man who was supremely active — active in persecuting, active in surpassing his contemporaries, active in devotion to ancestral tradition. He uses language of intensity: “beyond all measure,” “fiercer zeal than any.” This was not a lazy man. This was not a man asleep in the ordinary sense. He was, by every external measure, profoundly engaged. And yet the entire passage turns on the revelation that all of this ferocious activity was somehow beside the point — that something had to be revealed in him (1:15–16) that no amount of doing could produce.
Now consider Martha. She too is active, profoundly engaged. Luke tells us she was “pulled in every direction by the demands of serving” (Luke 10:40). The Greek word here — perispato — carries the sense of being dragged about, distracted, drawn outward in multiple directions at once. Martha is not idle. She is working hard, and working, moreover, in service to the Lord himself. Her activity is not wicked. It is not selfish. And yet Christ says to her, gently, with the repetition of her name that signals both tenderness and urgency: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and unsettled over so many things, yet only one thing truly matters” (Luke 10:41–42).
What is this one thing?
We must be careful here, because the moment we answer too quickly we fall into the very trap the passage warns against. The mechanical mind wants to say: prayer is better than work, contemplation better than action, sitting better than serving. But this is to remain on the surface. The passage is not about the superiority of one external posture over another. It is about two entirely different inner states — two qualities of attention, two orientations of the whole being.
Mary “settled at the Lord’s feet and listened to his word.” The phrase is deceptively simple. But to listen — truly to listen — requires the cessation of something. Not the cessation of life or energy, but the cessation of that particular inner noise that Nicoll would describe as the endless turning of personality: the calculating, comparing, anxious, self-justifying machinery of the ordinary mind. Martha’s complaint — “Tell her to come and help me” — is itself a perfect portrait of this machinery. She is not merely busy; she is keeping accounts. She is measuring her sister’s contribution against her own. She is appealing to an external authority to enforce her sense of fairness. All of this is deeply human, deeply recognizable, and it is precisely what must fall silent before anything new can be heard.
And this brings us back to Paul. What happened to him was not that he switched from one set of activities to another — from persecuting to preaching. What happened, as he himself describes it, was that God “was pleased to reveal his Son in me” (Galatians 1:16). Notice the preposition. Not to me, as though it were an external event. In me. Something was uncovered within the very structure of his being that all his previous zeal had concealed. And his immediate response was not to rush to Jerusalem, not to seek human counsel, not to plunge into a new program of activity. He withdrew into Arabia. He sat, as it were, at the feet of what had been revealed, and he listened.
This is Mary’s portion. It is the moment when doing gives way to a quality of receptive attention that allows higher meaning to enter. And Christ says something remarkable about it: “it will not be taken from her.” Why would he need to say this? Because everything that belongs to the level of personality, to mechanical life, to the turning of anxious thought, can be taken away. Possessions, reputation, health, even the satisfaction of service — all of it is subject to time and circumstance. But this one thing, this capacity to receive from a level above oneself, once genuinely touched, belongs to a different order. It is not subject to the same laws.
The zealot and the busy hostess share the same condition: an inner life so filled with its own noise that no new meaning can enter. The one thing that matters is not another task to add to the list. It is the opening of an interior space — a willingness to not-know, to not-do, to let something be revealed in us rather than accomplished by us.
This is the better portion. And it will not be taken away.
Photo by David Tomaseti on Unsplash
Scripture: Unified English Version
