Centering: Mary and Martha in the Christian Imagination

Euler 109

By way of considering the Faithful Imagination as applied to the New Testament, this presentation consists of a meditation on the figures of two friends of Jesus, the sisters Mary and Martha, as “imagined” by later Christian artists, Fra Angelico and Dorothy L. Sayers. Sayers, famously, complains that she’s never heard a sermon that took Jesus at his word (i. e., that Mary chose the better part). Sermons usually try to make Martha into the real role model, which is very irritating to Sayers. And me.