“And
I Will Give You Rest” by Rev. Paul Berghout (@FatherPB)
Piety
Rejoice
heartily, O daughter Zion, shout
for joy, O daughter Jerusalem!
See,
your king shall come to you; a
just savior is he, meek,
and riding on an ass, on
a colt, the foal of an ass. Zechariah 9:9
Consequently,
brothers and sisters, we
are not debtors to the flesh, to
live according to the flesh. For
if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but
if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you
will live. Romans 8:12-13
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.” Matthew 11:28-30
Study
A
yoke is a wooden frame fitted on working animals to evenly balance the load on
each animal and allow them to work as a team. Jesus wears the yoke, and we are
yoked to him.
A
teacher read to her class the text, “My yoke is easy.”
“Who
can tell me what a yoke is?” she asked.
A
boy said, “A yoke is something they put on the necks of animals.”
Then
the teacher asked, “What is the yoke God puts on us?”
A
little girl said, “It is God putting His arms around our necks.”
Jesus’s
yoke helps us lay down unnecessary burdens; to illustrate:
Dr.
George McCauslin was a very effective YMCA director. Some years ago, he was
selected to serve at a particularly challenging YMCA in western Pennsylvania,
near Pittsburgh. And that western Pennsylvania YMCA was losing membership, had
financial difficulties, and a multitude of staff problems. McCauslin found himself working 85 hours a
week. He found himself getting little sleep at night. McCauslin took little to
no time off. When he was not working, he was worrying and fretting about the
problems at his job.
He
went to a therapist who told him he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He
realized that he had to learn somehow to let go and let God into his problems.
He didn’t know quite how to do that.
So,
George McCauslin took an afternoon off, took a pad and paper, and took a long,
unhurried walk in the western Pennsylvania woods. As he walked through the cool
woods, he could eventually start to feel his tight body and his tight neck begin
to relax. McCauslin kept walking, and finally sat down under a tree and just
sighed and breathed deeply. For the first time in months, he felt relaxed.
He
got out his pad and paper, and he decided that although he would keep his job,
he would release his mental “over-control” in trying to manage every detail. He
wrote God a letter. He said, "Dear God, today I hereby resign as general
manager of the universe. Love, George."
Then,
with a twinkle in his eye, George McCauslin said, "And wonder of wonders,
God accepted my resignation."
George
McCauslin stopped his obsessive work habits. One lesson he teaches us is that
if our religion is primarily about obsessively or fearfully meeting religious
duties and other obligations, then it is indeed a hard yoke and heavy burden.
Jesus
wanted to free us from the burdensome religious and legal interpretations of not
only the scribes and Pharisees but also our obstacles.
It
is an act not of juggling balls on a stage, but of carrying eggs from a barn.
Make
no mistake: it is sometimes the act of carrying a cross. But it is
"light" in the sense when our purpose and priorities in life are
clear.
Regarding
George’s case, sometimes, among devout or practicing religious people, there
can be a resistance to self-care because of fear of putting “self” at the
center, as in self-centeredness. They would make the argument that we’re not
the priority: the people we serve are. Yet, this concern may reflect an
individualistic understanding of “self” shaped by the dominant culture.
Self-care
is not self-absorption or isolation, and self-care emphasizes the importance of
relationships and community in the way we do self-care. The purpose of self-care
is to put vitality back into one’s ministry and vocation over time.
Like
a woman who said that she used to obsess over her daughter’s mental illness,
believing that the right combination of labels would lead to her daughter’s
healing, the daughter now is hopefully receiving treatment. The mother is probably
leaving the names or diagnoses to doctors so she can concentrate on loving her
daughter as a labor of love. The difficulty is when we take up the labor before
love. When we get it right, the work of love is hardly work at all.
What
other “yokes” need to be broken today besides workaholism and over-functioning
by care-givers?
The
most significant yoke is the oppression and slavery of sin. It’s like “you used
to hold the Yoke, but now the Yoke holds you.”
I
am speaking of those who are tired and weighed down with the burden of self and
of those who want to be rid of the load but can’t. It’s a tiredness of spirit.
It’s a call to those who are trapped in the prison of self by sin but know no
way out. It’s okay to be absolutely powerless over self. This sense of
powerlessness is where we join the human race. There is the help of grace that
comes through powerlessness because we are yoked to Jesus, who is our highest
power.
Notice
that, like George McCauslin, we first must come to the admission of
powerlessness over our afflictions and powerlessness over our defects.
The
Second Reading speaks of being freed from being “debtors to the flesh, to live
according to the flesh.” The word in Greek is “sarx,” which means the whole
fleshy existence of persons, including all the human passions and emotions,
which can range from greed, prestige to jealousy, and any kind of temptation
such as the list given in Galatians 5:19.
In
that verse, St. Paul is telling of his response to God from his sin-enslaved
“I” who cried for deliverance, and God’s intervention. Such a cry is the point
where self-honesty begins to grow. For
example, in our Opening Prayer, we hear through the humiliated God, who was an
“abasement,” how the Lord raised a fallen world.
So
too, with us, it is only by the humility of heart to make an admission of
powerlessness over what afflicts us and then receiving victory through the
grace of God, will we feel yoked to Jesus as our higher power.
It
is only by the spirit, not raw willpower that the deeds of the body are put to
death or quieted. Galatians 5:22 is very enlightening: among the gifts of the
spirit is love, generosity, self-control.
Spiritual
warfare is indeed part of our daily Catholic faith simply because fighting
temptation and striving for virtue are themselves forms of spiritual warfare.
Thankfully,
God promises in Ezekiel 34:27, “I break the bars of their yoke and rescue them
from the hands of those who enslaved them.” The enemy is continually trying to
force his yoke upon us—a yoke of slavery and bondage of sin.
In
the Aramaic tradition, "yoke" and "lordship" were
synonymous ideas.
Action
Jesus’
yoke helps us hold our tongue or choose encouraging words, to be giving to a
person in material need, keeping holy the Sabbath by the Sunday Mass
obligation. An easy yoke means an
onslaught of greed, envy, gluttony, lust, and other temptations, do not afflict
us; it’s the joy of a quiet conscience.
Whether
rabbinical or political (or ecclesiastical, for those of us who wear stoles), a
yoke is the set of laws, interpretations, and expectations laid upon one by a
higher authority. Jesus says that God has “hidden these things from the wise
and the learned [and has] revealed them to little ones.”
Those
with expertise are often the hardest to reach. Jesus is not anti-education or
anti-intellectual; instead included as wise is any expert who seeks to be humble
and still teachable. Matthew 11:29, “learn from me, for I am gentle and humble
in heart.”
Hans
Dieter Betz described these verses about being yoked to Christ as being “like a
vessel which itself has no content, but which stands ready to be filled.”
Identify
your yokes, and ask yourself if they are yoked to Christ or not. There are
different yokes for different folks.
In
the Bible’s wisdom literature, thematically, "rest" is known to be
the final consequence of wisdom's call. For instance, Sirach 6,28 states:
"at last, you will find the rest she gives." Amen.
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