Today’s Gospel is one of the most beautiful and comforting passages in the New Testament. “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”
“Come to me”, Jesus invites. He has already come to us. Now he invites us to come closer to him. Jesus does not force himself upon us. God the Father gifted us with free will. We can decide for ourselves if we want a relationship with God and how deep it will be. He sent his son to be one with us, encouraging us to use our freedom well. Saint John Paul II reminded us that true freedom is not the freedom to do whatever we want, but the freedom to do what we ought to do, what is the right thing to do. The choice is ours.
“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened.” Another translation is: “come to me all who are exhausted and weighted down beneath your burdens.” That can include all of us at some time. Jesus was in part referring to those who were burdened down by the rules and regulations of the religious leaders of the day, which became ends in themselves rather than means to worship and build a relationship with God.
But all of us on occasion feel burdened, exhausted, as we face the realities of life. It may be in confronting sickness in a loved one or in ourselves. I cared for my grandmother in her last years when she was suffering from crippling arthritis and often felt burdened by the task, but not nearly so burdened as was she.
Burdens in life, which can affect our relationship with God, come in many forms. Sudden burdens like fire, floods, tornados or accidents; hidden burdens like addictions or Alzheimer’s, disheartening burdens like broken family relationships or defamatory gossip, heart-wrenching burdens like the death of a loved one or the breakdown of a marriage. In response we can turn in on ourselves.
Today’s readings however offer hope in such moments. The prophet Zachariah points us to the king who is to come, who is just and meek and who offers peace to all. We know he has already come. St. Paul reminds us that through baptism the spirit of God dwells within us and can lift us above the superficial which he calls life in the flesh.
Jesus tells us in the Gospel that he offers more, much more than what we see or can explain on the human level. But it requires recognizing him as the way to the Father, the way to know and understand God’s will and God’s way and to live at ease in the mystery of it all.
We feel that burden when we ask the great questions of life, especially why things happen the way that they do. We may ask why of God, why now, why in this way. I had a sister who suffered from multiple sclerosis and died young from the complications. Then another sister was diagnosed with the same mysterious disease. My mother in pain asked why. As we all would. Jesus reassures in these moments, “come to me and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you”.
We are told that in Palestine animal yokes were carefully carved. The measurements were taken; the yoke roughed out and tried on. It was adjusted so that it would fit well and not cut into the neck of the animal. The yoke was tailor made. Often there were joint yokes for two animals to pull the heavier loads. In a way this image is a reminder that Jesus walks with us and can help us pull our heavy loads in life.
Perhaps Jesus is telling us that if we allow him to be our carpenter who prepares our yoke, the framework of how we move through life will fit well, it will bring out the best in us, allow us to be what we were created to be. He laid out the principles of living through his example and his teaching. But we buck those principles because they limit us in some ways, encouraged by a culture that laughs at moral guidelines and taunts religious expression. To buck them ultimately results in sin. But it need not be.
Henri Nouwen told of a man imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. He was beaten severely to confess to anti-Nazi activity, but the man refused. In frustration the SS officer shouted, “Don’t you know that I can kill you?” The man looked up and said, “Yes, I know. Do what you want, but I have already died in Christ.” The officer then knew he had no power over the man. His cruelties had been based on the assumption that the man’s earthly life was his most precious possession, but he had died to self and it was Christ who was most precious to him.
Thirty year old Margaret Clitherow was a butcher’s wife and mother in York England when Catholicism was outlawed. She was arrested and accused of sheltering Catholic priests in her house. She refused to plead either guilty or not guilty. She said she could not plead guilty because as a Catholic she had committed no crime. As a mother, she could not plead not guilty because the prosecution planned to put her children on the witness stand to testify against her. She could not allow her children to feel that they had caused their mother’s death. And that is how she died, professing her Catholic faith and witnessing to a mother’s unselfish love. She was declared a saint. Problems will always be a part of our lives, but with Christ we can face them. Crises will come, but the Lord is with us through them. Burdens will remain, but we don’t have to bear them alone or without hope. Someone said when a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away your ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.
The one who says: “come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” is our engineer in the dark tunnels of our lives. It is in Christ we can trust and therefore be at rest even in the midst of all that swirls around us. But first we must accept his invitation to come to him.