Jesus referred to the “good part”¹ in the exchange between Martha and Mary, Lazarus’ sisters, saying that whoever chose it would never be deprived of it.
As a rule, however, human beings understand the “best choice” as the easiest, most pleasant, and/or the one that presents immediate beneficial results.
In the episode narrated in the Gospels, one of the women dedicates herself to domestic chores, while the other abandons everything to stand at the feet of the Messiah, listening to Him speak, while He taught, healed, transformed…
The attitude of the woman who listened Jesus seems, at first glance, remiss, if not irresponsible, for individuals who are more focused on the spirit of fulfilling their duties before the world, before the social, academic and professional groups to which they belong, before their loved ones and even before the most sacred bonds of the heart, such as the very serious commitments of parenthood.
On closer inspection, however, one sees in the woman praised by the Master the capacity to renounce social approval, the audacity to break with conventions and traditions (even though many are relatively respectable) and, more serious and painful: the Herculean willingness to let go of her affections, even the most precious ones, when her relationship with them contradicts the principles, purposes and ideals espoused in the sanctuary of her own conscience.
The most befitting existential decision, which enjoys the special protection of the Celestial Powers, is neither easy, nor simple, nor painless. It consists of what Jesus, at another moment of His Messiahship, called the “narrow gate”², which every authentic devotee of the Divine Light should strive to cross in search of their salvation.
The Christ-Verb also said, on another occasion, that the precondition for becoming His disciple was “to deny oneself and take up one’s cross and follow Him”³.
There is, on the other hand, a wonderful paradox in these metaphors, because choosing the “good part” of turning one’s back on earthly conveniences to prioritize spiritual matters brings, in the medium and long term, incomparably better benefits than those of the opposite alternative.
The “narrow passage,” which means “precise focus,” leads people to happier life scenarios for themselves and for the creatures they influence and serve.
The cross, in turn, constitutes the acute martyrdom of Calvary, in which the candidate for asceticism is suspended from the temporary gratifications of the Earth and propelled toward the transcendence of resurrection — the resurgence of consciousness at an entirely inconceivable level of paradigms and experiences of lucidity, peace and happiness!
Benjamin Teixeira de Aguiar (medium)
Eugenia-Aspásia (Spirit)
In the Name of Mary Christ
LaGrange, New York, USA
January 6, 2022
1. Luke 10:42.
2. Matthew 7:13.
3. Matthew 16:24.