Coming Together of Two Choices

Homily of H.E. Most Rev. Charles John Brown D.D., Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines

Day 3 Afternoon Session of the Philippine Conference on New Evangelization XI: Padayon

July 20, 2025 | Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Your Eminence Jose F. Cardinal Advincula, Jr., Archbishop of Manila; brother bishops; concelebrating priests, religious sisters here in very big numbers, religious brothers, deacons, seminarians, lay faithful, one and all:

For me as your Apostolic Nuncio, it gives me a lot of joy and happiness this afternoon to be with you, here in this beautiful arena, for the 11th Philippine Conference on New Evangelization—PCNE in the 11^th volume, we can say.

It was more than 10 years ago, in October of 2013, here at the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, that the first ever Philippine Conference on New Evangelization took place. That was just seven months after the election of our Holy Father, Pope Francis. This initiative was begun and inspired by His Eminence, Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, who was then Archbishop of Manila, to respond to the call for the new evangelization, and to rekindle the vision, traced by the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines, which had happened some 22 years earlier. Now PCNE, in its 11th version, invites us to continue journeying together on a mission.

I'm very grateful to the PCNE Director, Fr. Jason Laguerta for having invited me to be with you, to inspire you with the Words of the Gospel, to witness to our Christian faith, to be patient pilgrims of hope, active sharers of faith, and joyful missionaries of love.

The PCNE 11 is directed towards that objective. To facilitate the participants, as all of us, our encounter with Jesus, who is our hope of glory, and to experience hope by being in communion with Him and with one another.

The Primacy of Prayer

This afternoon, on this Sunday, we have perhaps one of the most beautiful passages in the four gospels for a meditation from the Gospel of Saint Luke (10:38-42). That beautiful story, so often commented upon of Martha and Mary. Many of us, all of us, have heard it many, many times.

Jesus goes to the house of Martha and Mary. Martha is busy preparing the meal, and Mary sits at the feet of the Lord, listening to Him, absorbing His teaching. We can say, almost in adoration of the Lord. Martha was very busy, becomes annoyed and tells Jesus, asks Jesus, “Lord, don’t you see that my sister has left me all alone. She’s not helping me at all with the serving. Tell her to help me.” And the Lord has those very famous words in reply, “Martha, Martha, you’re anxious and worried about many things. Only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken away from her.”

The primacy of prayer. That is what this Gospel is meant to communicate to us. The primacy of prayer, putting prayer first. Putting our life with Jesus first. The unum necessarium, the one thing necessary: the interior life. Our closeness to the Lord, our time of prayer, of adoration.

Brothers and sisters, many things in our lives are urgent. For all of us, even apostolic nuncios, many things are important. Many things are significant. Many things are pressing, but “only one thing is necessary”, Jesus says in the Gospel, and that is “to sit at the feet of the Lord”. To listen to Him, to adore Him, to live the life of prayer, to prioritize our interior life, to put that first. “Seek first, the kingdom of God and its righteousness and all these other things will be added unto you,” the Lord said (Mt. 6:33). So, putting prayer first.

If we don’t pray, if we’re not people of prayer, we don’t end up having much to give. We can run around, we can do all kinds of activities, but the fruitfulness, the power which animates those activities, will be lacking if we’re not persons of prayer.

So, the first point: prioritize the interior life, your lives of prayer, if you want to be joyful missionaries of God’s love in today's world, as part of the New Evangelization.

Chosen

Then secondly, I want to pause for a second on one word that Jesus uses. It's a verb actually. Jesus, when He's defending Mary against the criticisms of Martha says, “Mary has ‘chosen’ the better part”. Chosen. Let’s think about that word for a moment. The idea of being chosen and of choosing.

I haven't watched the TV series, the multi season television series streaming called, “The Chosen”. Many of you I'm sure have seen it. I know that many Catholics have praised it as a very good representation of the life of Christ. Others have been a little bit critical of it, but in general, there's been a lot of praise about it. It's interesting for the title, “The Chosen”. When the directors of that film, that long series, wanted to encapsulate in one word what it means to be a follower of Jesus. They called it “The Chosen”.

Our God is a God who chooses. God is a God who chooses. In the Old Testament, God chose to create the universe. Why is there anything instead of nothing? Why is there a universe? Why is there matter, space, instead of nothing at all? Because God chose to create. God chose. 

Then God chose the Jewish people in the Old Testament. Not the largest people, the most powerful people, but a small tribe of people. God chose them and lavished His love upon them (Deuteronomy 7:6-7). God chooses. Then, of course, in the New Testament, in the Annunciation (Lk. 1:26-38), God chooses Mary in Nazareth. He chooses her, a village girl, a girl in the provinces, a young woman, kind of a nobody in the eyes of the world. God chooses her to be the most important human being who ever lived after the Lord Himself. Mary is chosen by God. Then, of course, Jesus chooses His Twelve Apostles and His disciples (Lk. 6:12-16). It's not as if they chose Him, [rather] He chose them. As Jesus says, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you” (Jn. 15:16). Our God is a God who's choosing always. 

In today's Gospel, Jesus chooses to visit the house of Martha and Mary. I think, brothers and sisters, it's important for us, in the context of the New Evangelization, to take very seriously the fact that at this moment of salvation history, in 2025, God is choosing you. He's choosing us. God is making an active choice at this moment of us to do His work in the world—His work of evangelization. He's choosing us to be Pilgrims of Hope, active sharers of faith, joyful missionaries of love.

God's choosing didn't stop at the end of the New Testament. It continues at every moment of salvation history, and we are living that history now. At this present moment, God is choosing, God is calling, and each and every one of you has a role in that choice.

You are chosen, whatever your vocation is, to be a father of a family, to be a religious sister, to be a bishop, to be a priest. Whatever your vocation is, God has chosen you, and is choosing you at this moment.

Be aware of that choice. Feel that choice. You will sense that choice if you pray, if you prioritize your interior life.

Coming Together of Two Choices

It's interesting, of course, in the Gospel that we're meditating on today, the word “chosen” is not attributed to God, but it's attributed to Mary (of Bethany). “Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken away from her.”

So, we have God's choice. Right? Then we have Mary, the village girl, who chooses to sit at the feet of the Lord, to listen to Him, to adore him. We have this, we can say, this coming together of two choices:

• we have the infinite, sovereign, divine choice of God for us, and then

• we have the finite, small, weak, and feeble choice of us for God.

It's a mutual choosing, a reciprocal choosing, but it's an asymmetrical choosing. What does that mean? It's not equal. God's choice is sovereign. Our choice is momentary: it's weak, it wavers, it comes and goes; but with God's grace, it is strengthened through our lives of prayer. We need to be not only aware that we have been chosen, but we need to choose. This is key. This is what Mary is praised for in the Gospel today, “Mary has chosen the better part.”

Our lives, our days are a series of choices. We choose to get up. We choose to come to the University of Santo Tomas. We choose every moment of our lives. We need to choose to believe. We need to choose to believe in God, to believe in His revelation. We have the option not to believe.

There are many people who don't believe. We must choose to believe, and we must make a continual choice to believe. I choose to believe. People say, “No, I can't really believe until I understand. When I understand God, then I'll believe in him.” But that's not the way it works. That's not the way it works at all. Believing comes first, then understanding. When we believe, then we begin to understand. We need to believe. We need to choose to believe.

Choose God

Choice. We need to choose, to pray. We need to choose. We have options during our day. We can choose to pray or not to pray.

We need to choose prayer.

We need to choose to go to Mass.

We need to choose to love, especially to choose to love those that we don't feel drawn to, that we don't feel like loving.

We need to choose to love even our enemies.

We need to choose to witness to Christ in this world.

We have choices. Let's choose for Christ. When we feel that we have been chosen, and then we respond with our own choice, like Mary seated at the feet of Jesus, then all things become possible for us. Because then we begin to imitate Our Lady, the Mother of God, who was chosen, but had to say “yes” to the angel Gabriel. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux says, “The whole world held its breath” as Mary heard the angel Gabriel and began to give her response. “Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum” (Let it be done to me according to thy word). Mary chose to say, “yes”. We need to be like that. Then Mary (of Bethany), in the Gospel, the sister of Martha, chose to be at the feet of Jesus.

Conclusion and Exhortation

So, you can see for me as your Apostolic Nuncio, as a representative of Pope [Leo], it gives me so much happiness to be with you this afternoon, together with Monsignor Giuseppe Trentadue, who is the Counsellor at the Apostolic Nunciature.

Let me close by reminding you of one more choosing that we've all just experienced: the choosing of the new Bishop of Rome. The choosing of Pope Leo. One of the electors is with us in the sanctuary, Cardinal Advincula. Through the Holy Spirit, the Cardinals, inspired by the Holy Spirit, we can say, chose. They chose, and God's choice worked through the intermediaries of the Cardinals to choose our new Holy Father, Pope Leo. He has been chosen for us. We need to follow him. We need to pray for him as our new Holy Father.

So, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as we come to the end of the 11th iteration of the Philippine Conference on New Evangelization, let me just call upon you to be, as we said at the very beginning:

• pilgrims of hope,

• active sharers of faith, and

• joyful missionaries of love.

Conscious of the fact that you have been chosen, at this moment of history, to do something beautiful for God. Now choose God, and go forth and bear much fruit for the kingdom of God.

Transcribed by Joel V. Ocampo

Photos by Jahbee Cruz, TV Maria