Zec 9:9-10; Rom 8:9,11-13; Mt 11:25-30
I remember being on my hands and knees many years ago, diligently scrubbing the floor of our seminary chapel. I saw it as plain drudgery then. I wondered why we had to shine those floors many days of the week. Was it because we were novices then?
Such thoughts were going through my head when one of our priests whispered in my ears, “You clean God’s house with love and He will clean your heart.” I believed him and started scrubbing the floor more intensely with all the love that I could muster from my selfish heart because I was definitely in need of a pure heart from God.
We all have burdens, situations, and tasks that can feel like drudgery in this life. We can even feel overwhelmed by them and wonder if they have any meaning or value. We can resent them and refuse to face them with a generous spirit. We cannot wait to get rid of them.
In such moments, we must keep in mind Jesus’ double invitation to us.
He first invites us to come to Him, “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” This is not an invitation to a prolonged vacation. He does not take away all the burdens and stresses of our lives. He does not dispense us from struggles and hardship. He simply invites us to bring our burdens to Him and not keep them to ourselves. Our response to this invitation prepares us to enter into His own rest.
Then He invites us to receive His own yoke, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves.” The yoke of Jesus is to share in His own attitude towards the will of the Father. We find rest only when we shift our focus from our burdens to the will of God and to the very attitude of Christ. There is no rest for us without this letting go of our burdens to embrace the yoke of Jesus and participate in His attitude.
The rest of Christ, the rest that He invites us to share with Him through His yoke, is not a rest that comes from a life without burden or stress. His rest comes from living out of His deep intimate knowledge of the Father, “No one knows who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal Him.” (Mt 11:25-30) Jesus serves the Father in love and finds His joy in doing so. Thus, His rest is not a rest from hard and difficult moments or labors but a rest in the God who loves Him at all moments. This should be our rest too.
Our fallen world unceasingly offers many false and empty solutions to the burdens and hardships of life. We futilely try to distract ourselves from them even as they persist. We can turn to relationships, activities, and things for relief. We try to figure out all the minute details of God’s will for us in our difficulties. We can even turn to sinful pleasures for consolation and only experience the death that they surely bring, “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.”(Rom 8:13) We can indulge in social media and mindless entertainment that leave us more empty and confused.
On the contrary, we should see those burdensome moments as invitations from Jesus to come to Him. He invites us to Himself through deeper repentance from our sins. He draws us to Himself as we spend time in silent prayer that seeks to receive from Him and not impose our own views and plans. He invites us to Himself through prayerful reflection on His words in Sacred Scripture. He invites us to Himself through Eucharistic adoration. He does not want us to ignore our burdens or become fixated on them but to bring them all to Him.
He also invites us to share in His own attitude through His yoke in those moments. He wants us to learn from His humble attitude that serves His Father. He wants us to share in His own loving obedience to the Father at such moments. He teaches us at such moments to pray with unshakeable trust in the Father just as He prayed in His agony in Gethsemane, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done” (Lk 22:42). He shows us how to find deep and abiding joy in the Father at such moments. This is the joy that makes His yoke the only easy yoke and His burden light.
We Catholics have that amazing faith in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. This is where He is present today and calling us to Him, “Come to me all you who labor, and I will give you rest.” In His humanity He sees and understands every one of our burdens. This is where He presents to us all that we need to share in His own attitude of loving obedience to the Father and service to all of humanity. There is thus no reason for us to become consumed and overwhelmed by the burdens of life.
If, however, we still find ourselves overwhelmed and consumed by the burdens of this life and all the drudgery involved, then we are lacking that joy that come from sharing in the very rest of Jesus Christ.
The good news is that it is not too late. We can begin today and enter into that joyful rest. We only need to embrace the restful yoke of Jesus Christ by coming to Him always with all the details of our burdens and sharing in all His attitudes at all moments.
Glory to Jesus! Honor to Mary!
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