20140717 SHOULDER THE YOKE WITH JESUS
Scripture
readings for 17 Jul 2014
Reading 1, Isaiah 26:7-9, 12, 16-19
7 The path of the Upright One is honesty; you smooth the
honest way of the upright.
8 Following the path of your judgements, Yahweh, we set
our hopes in you, your name, your memory are all
our soul desires.
9 At night my soul longs for
you and my spirit within me
seeks you out; for when your judgements appear on earth the inhabitants of the
world learn what saving justice is.
16 Yahweh, in distress they had recourse to you, they
expended themselves in prayer, since your punishment was on them.
17 As a pregnant woman near her time of delivery
writhes and cries out in her pangs, so have we been, Yahweh, in your eyes:
18 we have been pregnant, we have writhed, but we have
given birth only to wind: we have not given salvation to the
earth, no inhabitants for the world have been brought to birth.
19 Your dead will come back
to life, your corpses will rise again.
Wake up and sing, you dwellers in the dust, for your dew will be a
radiant dew, but the earth will give birth
to the shades.
Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 102:13-14, 15, 16-18, 19-21
14 for your servants love her very stones, are moved to
pity by her dust.
18 This shall be put on record for a future generation,
and a people yet to be born shall praise God:
20 to listen to the sighing of the captive, and set free
those condemned to death,
Gospel, Matthew 11:28-30
29 Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and
humble in heart, and you will find rest
for your souls.
30 Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light.'
SHOULDER
THE YOKE WITH JESUS
Are you over burdened by the pressures of work, family
responsibilities and the demands of the office you hold? Are you
overwhelmed by anxiety over your financial difficulties or health? Are
you emotionally wounded because of rocky and estranged relationships with your
spouse, children and loved ones? If you are, then perhaps you have been
relying only on yourself and your ingenuity to resolve all these challenges in
your life.
Isaiah in the first reading
tells us that justice and salvation are not brought about merely by human
effort alone. Only God can help us to overcome all the obstacles of
life. It is to God that we must turn for deliverance and salvation.
With God, nothing is impossible, for He can even give life to corpses: “Your
dead will come to life, their corpses will rise; awake, exult, all you who lie
in the dust, for your dew is a radiant dew and the land of ghosts will give
birth.”
So what must we
do? Turn to the
Lord in prayer and supplication! With earnestness, we must seek the
Lord. “At night my soul longs for you and my spirit in me seeks for you;
when your judgements appear on earth the inhabitants of the world learn the
meaning of integrity.” The psalmist testifies to God’s mercy for
us. His experience of this mercy gave him confidence that God “will arise
and have mercy on Zion, for it is time to pity her. For her stones are dear to
your servants, and her dust moves them to pity … He has regarded the prayer of
the destitute, and not despised their prayer.” And “from His holy height,
from heaven He beheld the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoners, to release
those doomed to die.”
The gospel tells us that Jesus
is the embodiment of God’s mercy. He who assumed our humanity
understands our struggles more than anyone else. In His compassion, He
invites us saying, “Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened and I
will give you rest.” Such an invite cannot be rejected because we are
exhausted and frustrated with our lives. Indeed, His words are so
consoling to those of us who are so tired of life and its drudgery. But
how can this promised rest be truly ours?
The condition to share in
the rest of Jesus is that we shoulder His yoke and learn from Him, for
He said, “I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your
souls.” What does it mean to shoulder His yoke? Some scholars
suggest that the yoke Jesus was referring to is a double-yoke that is placed
over the neck of two oxen so that together they help each other to plough the
field. So when Jesus tells us to shoulder His yoke, He is asking us to
carry our yoke together with Him. He will supply us the grace, that
additional strength to carry our crosses and burdens in life.
Alternatively, this yoke
is sometimes understood as Jesus Himself carrying us on His shoulder, like the man who saw only one set of
footprints in the sand and thought that God had deserted him in his hour of
need, only to realize later that those footprints were not his but the
Lord’s. This is of course an inspiring way to see Jesus assisting
us. Such an interpretation has its validity because the gospel tells us
that Jesus carries our infirmities in His body.
I would prefer to believe
that this yoke that Jesus is asking us to carry is a reference to our
sharing His mind and His heart. When we enter into the mind and heart
of Jesus; His compassion for the poor and the suffering, especially for
sinners, and His love for His Father, then we can appreciate why Jesus did not
mind undertaking so much sufferings upon Himself. Simply because Jesus is
the Compassionate One! He loves us so much that there is nothing too
heavy for Him to carry. When there is love in whatever we do, no
suffering is too much, because love makes the suffering tolerable and even
joyful. Within this context, the claim of Jesus that His yoke is easy and
His burden light makes more sense. Consequently, to carry the yoke of Jesus is
to see everything through His perspective.
Such a change of heart
and mindset requires, first and foremost, humility. If Jesus could empty Himself of His
divinity and suffer for us unto death on the cross, it was because He “is
gentle and humble of heart.” His humility enables Him to be identified
with us in our humanity. His gentleness comes from His solidarity with us
in our fight against sin and temptation. Therefore, if we are going
through intense struggles in our personal life, especially in dealing with our
sins, particularly that of pride and insecurity, be assured that that God is
compassionate and He is patient with us in our growth.
With humility, we can also
recognize that our sufferings and struggles in life are part of the whole
process of growth in spiritual maturity and freedom. As Isaiah
exclaims, “Lord, you are giving us peace, since you treat us as our deeds
deserve. Distressed, we search for you, Lord; the misery of oppression was your
punishment for us.” Jesus Himself learnt obedience through
suffering. If we find ourselves unable to come out of our misery or
our sins, it is because we have not yet come to the point of realization that
we must let go and let God take over. Until then, the Lord is waiting for
us to come to the point where we, like the woman with child, writhe and cry out
in labour but conceive nothing! When we see the futility of our reliance
on ourselves and on our human ability, then we will at last seek Him who is the
mighty Saviour.
Through our sufferings
too, we will also come to a situation of wanting to give up our sins of pride
and unbelief.
Only when we decide to give up sin and the idols in our lives, especially our
ego, then God will listen to our prayers for aid. For only “the path of
the upright man is straight, you smooth the way of the upright. Following the
path of your judgements, we hoped in you, Lord, your name, your memory, are all
my soul desires.” More often than not, it is our sins that lead us to the
situations we are in, hence it is only through our brokenness that we can come
to the utter submission of our lives to Him. And when we accept the
crosses in our lives out of love for others, or for our purification, then the
burdens we carry become light and liberating. No longer will we see them as
something negative, but they become the means to authentic love and freedom.
WRITTEN BY THE MOST REV WILLIAM GOH
ARCHBISHOP OF SINGAPORE
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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