This past week, the Church celebrated the feast of St. Monica. For those who may not be familiar with Monica, she is the mother of St. Augustine. Augustine walked away from the Faith at a young age, and he spent many years devoted to a pseudo-religion called Manichaeism. Monica was distraught at her son’s turning away from Christ, and spent all of those years in prayer, offering even her tears for her son’s conversion. Eventually, as Augustine himself puts it, “[God] flashed and shone, and broke through [his] blindness;” God got through to Augustine and led him back to the Faith. Both Augustine and the Church attribute her prayers as one of the chief influences that eventually brought him to the Faith, even if in a behind-the-scenes manner.

Have you ever heard the voice of God? What did it sound like? Often times, when we think of prayer, we think of it just in terms of talking at God: praying devotional prayers like the rosary or novenas, telling God what we need or what we want, etc. But when you read through the saints and their prayer lives, or when you look through the stories of people coming to Jesus with various needs, you see that it is more conversational than that. We talk to God, but how often do we actually listen?

Today we hear a rather famous and also heavily debated passage from the Gospel. Martha is busy serving at table while her sister Mary is listening attentively to Jesus teaching. Martha complains to Jesus about Mary not helping, and Jesus responds that Mary has chosen the better part and that it would not be taken from her.