The Burden and The Rest

Matthew 11
28 “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.
29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your selves.
30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

Burden.
Have we got one today?
From our job, our school, our family, our friends, our community, our relationship, or maybe even from strangers.
Being human, all of us got our own burdens.
But Sometimes the heaviest burdens are not the physical, external burdens such as health or financial.
Instead, it is the intangible, internal, spiritual ones.

When communications are not good..
When relationships are not good..
When respect is gradually diminished..
When truth is absent..
When virtue is diminished..
We feel bad.

When faith, hope, and love are not strong, we feel weak.

Have we ever wondered why?
It is simply because there is too much bad thing/evil in such situation.

The more evil is there, the less we feel good.

Or to put it in academia terms: “There is an inverse relationship between evil and feeling good”

We can put it the other way around too:

The less evil is there, the more we feel good.

So if we want to feel good more, there must be less evil.
How? It is very simple.
What is evil?
Evil is merely the absence of good.
So if we do good, we reduce evil.

The more we do good, the more we feel good.

But sometimes we just feel that no matter how hard we tried, we feel that the burden is too hard.
The situation is too bad.
The evil is too.. evil.

Jesus answers our worries. “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Look at our visual images of Jesus: he comes with an openness (His hands are always open). He wants us to come to Him.

But how might we achieve the rest Jesus assures us?
It is not easy; if it were easy to attain, we would not bother wishing or praying for it..

Jesus explains how to get the rest: “Take my yoke upon yourself, and learn from me.”

But what is Jesus’ yoke?
Jesus came to do the will of the Father in heaven.
He had suffered and died for us. Why?
Not only to save us, but to set an example.
He demonstrates truth and love by giving his life for all others.

We can attain Jesus’ rest by doing what God wants us to do, just as Jesus has done the will of the Father.
By humbling ourselves, facing and accepting the realities of our lives, discerning what God would want us to do, then trying to do our best in our situation, we can find divine rest.

God creates each of us in the image and likeness of God; we are inherently good in our being, even though we commit sins in our behaviors.
That we are created to be good and to do good, that the purpose and joy of our lives is to be good. Conversely, sin makes us sad.

God wants you to do good.

The more we do good, the more we feel good.

By doing such, we will find rest to the degree that we turn to Jesus and the Church which he founded. And when we share Jesus’ vision and Jesus’ way, we will live better qualitatively.

As St. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until we rest in you”,
Let’s respond to Jesus’ invitation: “Come to me all you who labor and find life burdensome, and I will give you rest.. My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Sincerely yours,
Andrew

Reflection:
Think of your own experiences when in the past you have felt, or currently feel, terribly burdened … weighed down… at the end of your rope… imagining that the next straw will be the one final straw to break the camel’s back.
The range of feelings we experience at times of great burdens are not happy feelings.
Can you identify at least one situation like that?

This article is based and inspired by the writing of Father O’Malley of Emmitsburg, Maryland as found in here