A Reflection for Thursday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” (Mt 11:29-30)
Does your relationship with God feel like it gives you rest?
And what does that rest feel like? A bubble bath? Crawling under the covers after a long day? That gulp of water after finishing a run?
Speaking of water: once, while studying in Rome during college, I was peer pressured into running a 10k, which traversed at least a few of the eternal city’s seven hills. I was not in shape. After I plodded to the finish line, desperate for a drink to satiate my great thirst, I eagerly accepted the bottle of water a volunteer handed to me. I ripped off the cap, drank deeply for a few seconds and promptly spit it out.
It was frizzante, sparkling water.
I thought about that story when I read today’s Gospel. About how often, when we desperately need a drink of water, someone in the church, often someone who has promised to provide Jesus’ easy yoke to his people, hands us instead something that agitates, unsettles, desolates.
And yet, rest is not all that Jesus promises us. Elsewhere Jesus tells his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” So which one is it? An easy yoke or a heavy cross?
In truth, I don’t believe it is God who gives us our crosses, but the world and the people with whom we share it. The saints realized that there is greater joy, greater rest in forgiving their neighbor, advocating for the downtrodden, and resisting the frenzy of daily life. But many of them also found that living like that calls into question the logic we have built our world upon. And the world usually doesn’t stand by idly and take it.
Perhaps we can say two things with confidence about today’s reading: Jesus calls us to conversion while offering us the rest. When your conscience pricks you with “Should I be acting like this?” it will not feel like rest at all. Change is difficult and painful.
But many of us have also been saddled with that ever-infamous “Catholic guilt” that haunts and pricks and manifests more like anxiety and scruples than a genuine call to conversion. Understanding when God is asking us to change, and when he is asking us to rest, requires prayer, experience and community. In short, it requires relationship. And if you are in doubt, I sometimes find it helpful to trust the rhyming of the lectionary with my own life. So today, let us pray that we are able to actually trust in this promise of rest from Jesus.
This week, the church in the United States is celebrating at the National Eucharistic Congress. Perhaps we can try to hear our Eucharistic Lord speaking to us directly the next time we attend the Supper of the Lamb: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”
Can you imagine it? [Inhale] Do you believe it? [Exhale] Jesus is there, ready for an embrace, a long chat, a warm cup of coffee, some well-deserved rest.
