We are often told, when we are taught about humility and arrogance to not talk of ourselves, but let others do the talking about you. Your talk, we are told, should not be about I, me, and myself. And yet, in today’s Gospel, All Our Lord is doing, is talking about Himself. Listen again: “Come to me”, “I will give,” “Take my yoke,” “learn from me,” “I am meek and humble,” “my yoke”, “my burden.”
Our Lord, as we well know, is the very model of the virtuous man, so why is He talking so much about Himself?
He is talking about Himself, because He is contrasting Himself with someone else, someone who is not “meek and humble of heart”, but someone who is arrogant, proud and vain. That someone else is Satan, who in Jn 8: 44 we are introduced to as the Father of Lies. Our Lord is contrasting Himself with Satan, because both Satan, the Prince of this world, and Our Lord are offering us a burden and a yoke; and Our Lord is trying to indicate the difference between the two burdens that each of them offers and imposes.
When Our Lord says, "Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest”, we must understand that He is speaking to people who are already burdened and are already labouring. He is speaking to us, who are, labouring and are burdened because we are the “poor banished children of Eve” who are burdened by the effects of original sin, have a predilection to sin, and carry our heavy burden of sin. It is by giving up our burden of sin, the burden of concupiscence, that we will find rest.
But willing to give up of the burden of concupiscence, does not mean that there is no burden. This is the sad fact of the fall, that the world is compromised by the effects of sin, and that there must be recompense for each of them. On the contrary, Our Lord promises us that there is another burden to carry, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.” This yoke is the burden of the cross. But, because it is the burden of the Cross, we know that this invitation is unlike the invitation offered to us by Satan. Because what the burden of concupiscence does, is to make us walk alone and constantly curve in on ourselves. The burden of the Cross, however, leads to cooperation with the God’s plan to save all of mankind; remember what Paul said to the Colossians (1:24): “in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church”.
But there is another difference between Our Lord and Satan, and that is unlike Satan, who offers us false promises and lets us drop to hell, Our Lord accompanies us along the way, carrying the heavier burden. Listen to this verse again “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.” This is to say, that our Cross, is His Cross. When we take His yoke upon us, He shares the burden with us. And how does He share the burden with us? By uniting His flesh with ours through the sacrament of communion, through which His flesh becomes our flesh. Like a yoke that has two oxen hitched to it, Christ walks with us, and it is for this reason that He says that His burden is light. Learn from me, he says, because He will show us how to hang on the cross which is the high road of salvation.
One last observation before I
conclude. If it is the Cross which is the yoke our Lord has to offer, how is it
that he presents it to us, as easy? How could the Cross, ever be easy? I
suspect that it is easy, because for all its pain and torture, it is easier
that the trials of Hell which await those who reject the Cross and embrace
concupiscence, Satan, and his empty promises. Or as St. John Bosco is reported
to have said “Your reward in heaven will make up completely for all your pain
and suffering.”
(A version of this homily was first
preached in Concanim to the community at the St. Pius X Pastoral Institute, Old
Goa on 18 July 2024.
Image: Christ Carrying the Cross, Titian, 1565, Museo del Prado, Madrid. )
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