Last Saturday, after the 5 o’clock mass, my wife and I went to dinner down on Austin Street. And after dinner, we took a walk and decided to stop in at Barnes & Noble. Upstairs, in the religion section – wouldn’t you know that I’d go to the religion section? – I found a new book called “How to Have a Mary Heart in a Martha World.”

The author, of course, was talking about the gospel we just heard.

And it IS a “Martha world.” Probably now more than when Martha was alive.

I recently found a survey online that reported the average American father works 49 hours a week … and his wife, if she has a full time job, just a few hours less. Around those 49 hours, there’s soccer practice, cub scouts, the school play, the PTA, the project in your brief case that you have to get done for work the next morning, the toilet that’s broken, homework to correct, bills to pay, dinner to cook, and the dog to walk.

Little wonder that according to one poll 83% of Americans want more time to spend with their families – and even more want more time just to spend with themselves.

And in the middle of that kind of frenzy — a frenzy that probably had its own variations in first century Palestine — we hear Jesus say: “You are anxious and worried about many things.”

Yes. We are. Maybe this week, you were also anxious about getting to work when the subways were flooded…and getting home when the steampipes were exploding. Things Martha never dreamed of.

We’re pulled in so many directions, how do we know which way to go? The gospel today gives us a clue. To understand the story of Martha and Mary, I think, it helps to put it in context. Just before this, you’ll recall, Luke gives us the parable of the Good Samaritan. Having taught that lesson, Jesus next goes to visit Martha and Mary.

And to the busiest of the two, Martha, Jesus says: there is need of only one thing. He doesn’t explain what that is. He doesn’t have to. Because he has already told us, in the story of the Good Samaritan.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your being, with all your strength and with all your mind. And your neighbor as yourself.”

And now, we are seeing that in the flesh.

Mary is fulfilling the first half of that: loving her Lord with all her heart.

And Martha, meantime, is loving — and serving — her neighbor.

The challenge to us today is to combine those, to bring them together, the same way that Mary and Martha are brought together, sharing the same house, living under one roof.

The challenge is: “To have a Mary heart in a Martha world.”

About 400 years ago, in France, there was a young man by the name of Nicholas Herman, who entered a Carmelite monastery after spending some years as a soldier. He took the name “Brother Lawrence.” He was assigned to kitchen duty. He hated it. But in the kitchen, amid all the noise and frenzy, he found a way to God. He later wrote down some of his thoughts in letters that were collected in a little book, “The Practice of the Presence of God,” that has become a spiritual classic.

Brother Lawrence wrote that even in the noise of the kitchen, he possessed God as if he were praying before the blessed sacrament.

His secret was simple: he spent every moment reminding himself of the nearness of God, the intimacy that God shares with us. It’s an idea that was captured centuries later on a famous engraving. I have a copy in my office at home: “Bidden or not bidden,” it says, “God is present.” Whether you realize it or not, God is with you. Understanding that, Brother Lawrence made even mundane kitchen work a prayer.

It’s the kind of prayer that Jesus was calling on Martha to pray. And 2,000 years later, he calls on all of us to live and pray that way: to discover in the long work week and the carpools and garden that needs weeding and that dog that needs walking and the umpteen unfinished projects of daily life…something sacred.

To remind ourselves that God is present in all of it. To be grateful for that, and to celebrate that, and to never take it for granted.

A more contemporary example comes in Tony Hendra’s beautiful book, “Father Joe,” a memoir of Hendra’s 30-year friendship with a gentle Benedictine monk. Near the end of the book, the aging and frail Father Joe talks about the work that monks do – and the work that all of us do. A friend of mine at CBS who is Jewish read this and liked it so much he has it taped over his desk at work. This is what it says:

“Work itself is a prayer. Work done as well as possible. Work done for others first and yourself second. Work you are thankful for. Work you enjoy, that uplifts you. Work that celebrates existence, whether it’s growing grain in the fields or using God-given skills like yours. All this is prayer that binds us together, and therefore to God.”

It is all about striving to practice, like Brother Lawrence, the presence of God.

It can begin here and now, as we receive the Eucharist, and receive that presence — the Real Presence of Christ — in communion.

And it can continue as we leave mass and try to live out what we have received — to make that Presence known to the world.

If we do that, I think it will bring us one step closer to living the message of today’s gospel.

We’ll truly learn how to have a Mary heart in a Martha world.

Image: “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary,” by Johannes Vermeer, c.1654-56