A Reflection for Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent
Find today’s readings here.
Jesus experienced a mysterious presence throughout his life. He gave this presence many names, but the most common term he used for it was “the Father.” Later Christian writers, drawing on their own experience, called this enigmatic reality “Holy Spirit,” and understood it to be the same mysterious influence that gave their own words and actions such powerful effect.
The words Jesus used to describe his spiritual experience came, in large part, from his own religious tradition. The saying that Matthew shares in today’s Gospel reading resembles the advice of the writer Ben Sira: “Gain wisdom for yourselves at no cost. Take her yoke upon your neck; that your mind may receive her teaching. For she is close to those who seek her, and the one who is in earnest finds her. See for yourselves! I have labored only a little, but have found much” (Sir 51:25-27).
It also reflects the language and sentiment of Jeremiah the prophet: “Thus says the LORD: Stand by the earliest roads, ask the pathways of old, ‘Which is the way to good?’ and walk it; thus you will find rest for yourselves” (Jer 6:16). Jesus understood the mysterious presence and power that accompanied him to be the very mind of God, the Wisdom that summoned all Creation into being and continued to repair it and bring it to fulfillment.
This is how he understood Ben Sira’s “yoke.” It is a burden insofar as one must conform one’s life to it, but it is a source of rest and joy because the “yoke” represents the divine power already at work in the cosmos.
A careful reading of Gn 2:4-15, for example, reveals God to be the primary laborer in the garden. Adam and Eve labor with God, but they are secondary actors in God’s creative work. Scripture attests that this remained the case even after Adam and Eve sinned. It was God’s action that saved Israel again and again and through Israel saved all humanity.
When Jesus conformed his life perfectly to God’s instruction, when he took on Wisdom’s “yoke,” he found himself at God’s side “back in the garden,” laboring to bring it to completion and experiencing the joy of paradise that was always meant to be humanity’s inheritance. Serving under God’s yoke was like discovering a source of kinetic energy. It gave power to every one of Jesus’ words and deeds.
This is the gift God gives to all who take up the same yoke. As today’s first reading promises, “They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles' wings. They will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint” (Is 40:31). Advent gives us a privileged time to seek out God’s mysterious presence, still active in the world, and place ourselves at its side, to serve and to praise, to labor and find rest.
