"The mystics in history have also offered different ways of understanding Mary and Martha. The fourteenth-century manual of contemplation The Cloud of Unknowing suggests that Mary represents the contemplative life while Martha symbolizes the active life. In other words, Mary stands for those who live in cloistered communities of monks or nuns, devoting their lives to prayer and meditation, while Martha represents those who live ‘in the world,’ with families and households and the ordinary responsibilities of secular life.

“… On the other hand, Teresa of Avila in her mystical masterpiece The Interior Castle refuses to see one sister as somehow more exalted than the other.”

McColman, Carl. The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: an Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2023, p. 95.