You probably noticed that our Gospel passage, though brief, is divided into two separate, but related parts: First, we hear Jesus praying to His Father in heaven, then, we hear him speaking directly to us.
His prayer to God the Father is not separate from His words and Teachings; it is His connectedness with the Father that brings the divine dimension to His human insights, words and actions in His earthly ministry.
So, we’ll look at these two dimensions, more briefly at the prayer, and then in a little more depth, at His invitation to approach Him, to see what these will mean for us today.
The Lord Praying
We are given the privilege to hear a prayer of Jesus in which He calls God “Father” for the first time. Later He will draw His disciples into this prayerfulness when He teaches them “the Lord’s Prayer,” instructing them (and therefore, us) to address God as Father.
And here, He teaches us not to address God as “Father of Jesus,” nor to speak in the singular: praying “My Father,” but we are to approach God praying “Our Father,” so that, even in the privacy of personal prayer, we realize that we never pray alone: the entire Communion of Saints comes to join us.
By addressing God as “Father” we learn how our human prayer draws us into the mystery of the interior life of the Holy Trinity, where dwell the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Turning to the Lord in prayer can, however, create a lesson in trust and patience, because God answers prayers in His time, not necessarily in our own.
In response to our prayers, God doesn’t always change the circumstances of our lives, but through His imparting of Grace, can change our outlook and our response to egregious circumstances. This prayerfulness, this patience, will provide for us the context in which the Lord says to us, “Come to me…”
The Lord’s Invitation
It seems especially appropriate in this season of vacations and travel, that Our Lord would speak of overcoming burdens with rest. But His connection between burden and rest is closer to us than that… and more profound. This is especially so, since He begins His invitation with the words “Come to me…” so that our destination, and therefore our unburdening will benefit from His divine Presence.
Our burdens are certainly real, and everyone suffers in different ways:
+ financial difficulties
+ stress at work
+ family turmoil
+ health problems
+ finding equilibrium in a crazed, politically-charged world …
And, while He who suffered and died on the Cross promises to be with us in the midst of our personal suffering, burdens and difficulties, He is speaking more to our spiritual lives in His promise to reveal God the Father to us.
Sometimes, however, we do suffer in the spiritual realm:
+ wondering if God hears our prayers or why He doesn’t seem to be answering…
+ questioning why a good God would allow evil in the world…
+ sometimes finding the practice of the Faith unrewarding.
Indeed, there are some who find the practice of the Faith itself to be the ultimate burden: they will speak of religion as little more than a set of rules and regulations, or a collection of demands and obligations. But the heaviest burden for humanity is actually faith and religion’s opposite: sin and sinfulness, that place a heaviness upon our hearts and in our souls.
But, what of the Lord’s invitation to rest… to find peace for our souls? When we speak of rest here, we’re not speaking only of “eternal rest” in heaven, our greatest hope: Our Lord’s invitation here is more immediate.
God’s rest is not a form of simple inactivity; it is a way of Being, available in some measure in this life, though rarely achieved. Jesus says directly that this knowledge, this wisdom will be revealed only to “little ones,” meaning those who accept God’s truth as taught by Christ, in humility, rather than “the wise and the learned” - we might say “elite” - who seek to become their own source of truth separating them from divine Revelation.
How shall we come upon this rest, this mode of being? Jesus asks us to take His yoke upon our shoulders, an oxymoron that would turn some people away from Religion in general, and from Jesus in particular.
So, then, what is His yoke… and how can it seem easy? Our Lord’s yoke is His Teaching, and in our acceptance of Jesus as our way, our truth and our life. But how can this yoke be understood as easy? To begin, Scripture scholars point out that this word “easy” is borrowed from the agrarian world in which the yoke placed upon an ox’s shoulders would be carved to be well-fitting, thereby causing the beast of burden little to no pain in its work of pulling the plow.
The well-fitting yoke that the Lord asks us to take on will be tailored to our own personality, spirituality, and circumstances of life. It will be experienced as “easy,” or well-fitting because Truth, as revealed to us by Christ, is ultimately simple and easy to accept for those who are open to it: it reveals God’s intentions for humanity and for each individual person who approaches Christ’s teaching in the aforementioned humility.
And how is His burden “light?” It is light because, in the end, as Jesus says elsewhere, “The truth will set you free.” His “burden” now becomes the source of our freedom: the freedom to become whom God created us to be. What could bring us greater lightness of being than this?
For greater insight, let’s look now at an application of the Lord’s invitation to “you who labor and are burdened,” to an outstanding cultural experience besetting us, depriving so many people of rest.
Sociologists are pointing out a current post-pandemic malaise which is described as a growing epidemic of loneliness and isolation in our society. People speak frequently of feeling isolated… invisible… and insignificant… a kind of extended, inward-turning case of the “blues.”
This experience pre-dates the pandemic, but the pandemic seemed to spread this anxiety as far as the virus itself. One could see the onset of this in our present-day addiction to technology separating, rather than uniting people.
Sociologists are rather dumbfounded in trying to reach a solution. But Our Lord has a ready answer: He says, “Come to me…” Our Lord will turn loneliness into solitude, so that the time we spend alone with Him — or together with Him at Holy Mass — will bring a new grace to our interactions with society, leading us beyond fear and mistrust to collective peace in him.
Our time with the Lord will offer the respite our spirits crave so that we can reevaluate our lives, healing the false narrative of isolation, insignificance or invisibility, and finding in Him our most profound sense of “belonging” which the pandemic jeopardized.
The “rest” which Our Lord offers is not a guarantee of a problem-free life. God doesn’t necessarily change our life circumstances or solve our problems when we pray to Him, but He gives us the Grace of serenity with which to face life’s egregious realities.
God’s own rest offers a share in the interior life of the Holy Trinity as well as a transcendent notion of “being” in which God’s nearness transforms our worldview, imparting peace. Thus the connecting point between the release from burden and the entrance into serene, heavenly rest is not a point at all, but a person: Our Lord Jesus Christ, who might say to our present experience: “I will give you rest,” but perhaps, as well, “I will give you… tranquility… sanity… respite… relief… release.. renewal… (add your particular need here)”
So, today, listen to the Lord’s words with new ears when He says: “Come to me…” “Learn from me…” “Take my yoke…” because, in whatever you seek, the Lord will bring you His grace and His strength, for His yoke is easy and His burden is light.