Martha and Mary signify two dimensions of the spiritual life. Martha signifies an active life as she busily labors to honor Christ through her work. Mary exemplifies the contemplative life as she sits attentively to listen and learn from Christ. Fr. Ron Rolheiser speaks of the tension between contemplation and action that is demonstrated in the story of Martha and Mary. Martha engaged herself in the necessary task of serving others while Mary sat at Jesus’ feet, doing nothing but loving a lot. Jesus commends Mary, saying she has chosen the better part. Christian spirituality forever after has had to struggle with those words. Is prayer really more important than active service? The saints would have us do both. Healthy spirituality is not a question of choosing between Mary and Martha but of choosing both – contemplation and action, soulcraft and statecraft, loving and doing, prayer and service, private morality, and social justice. While both activities are essential to Christian living, the latter is greater than the former. The active life terminates in heaven, while the contemplative life reaches its perfection. Our challenge as disciples is to see beyond the either-or nature of this story. An active life forgetful of union with God is useless and barren, but an apparent life of prayer, which shows no concern for serving and evangelizing the world through our daily, ordinary actions, also fails to please God. The key for the engaged disciple lies in being able to combine these two lives without either harming the other.