Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
This is the mystery of the kingdom which is hidden from the learned and wise,
but revealed to the merest of children, as our Lord spoke about in yesterday's gospel.
In fact, today's reading is a continuation of yesterday's.
Our Lord talks about the way in which those who are humble receive the message,
and that message is like the way in which Christ humbles himself to become one of us.
If we are small and humble, if we are willing to...
If we are willing to imitate Christ Jesus, we can discover the key to the mystery,
and there we shall find our comfort and our rest.
Our Lord beckons us to go to him and to embrace the mystery that he reveals to us,
which is, first of all, himself.
He who reveals to us the Father.
The Father who becomes one of us, who humbles himself to become this child of Mary,
and to become born under the law, obeying the fourth commandment,
and delivering himself over to the providence of his Father that will ultimately lead him to the cross.
We are called to go to him and to embrace that mystery, first of all.
We profess it every Sunday.
As we proclaim our belief in the incarnation and redemption of Christ.
But our Lord also invites us to lay our burdens upon him.
And in fact, that is what we have done, and he has accepted those burdens.
He has taken upon himself the yoke of our sins and the yoke of all of our failures,
and he has taken all of those burdens and put them on the cross.
He has given that to the cross, and he has put sin and death to death and brought us new life.
And so he invites us to experience the refreshment of his goodness.
But the key and the mystery, the thing that is revealed only to children and not to the clever and to the wise,
is the fact that we are to find our refreshment by taking our yoke,
his yoke, our Lord's yoke upon our shoulders, and learning from him.
And his yoke, if you think about what he's talking about,
he's talking about the yoke that's put on the back of a beast of burden
to carry something very, very heavy.
Our Lord is promising to refresh us if we are willing to burden ourselves.
He promises to unburden us if we are willing to carry his burden,
which is to place upon our shoulders,
his cross, and carry it.
Your souls will find rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
So our Lord is saying, if you want refreshment, come to me.
Don't run away from the cross.
Don't run away from the things that bother you.
Bring all of that to me, and I will help you to carry it.
It's a very paradoxical truth that our Lord is communicating to us,
but it is.
It is really that mystery of the kingdom.
It is that thing which is hidden from the clever and the learned,
and revealed only to the merest of children,
those who are willing to receive God's word humbly and on bended knee.
Our Lord is not going to deliver us from the cross.
In fact, it is the prerequisite for our following of him.
But we will find peace and rest.
We will find joy and happiness if we are willing to bear that cross,
and to do it ultimately out of love.
That's really what it means when our Lord says, come to me.
When we go to our Lord, when we come before him,
and receive him in the sacraments especially,
most especially, of course, in the Eucharist,
when we give him the best of our time every day through prayer,
when we are willing to accept God's will and abandon ourselves into his hands,
he makes it possible.
He makes it possible for us to do all these things out of love.
He allows us to forget ourselves and to think about him before anything else,
and then about our neighbor.
And when we do that, when we bear our cross out of love,
when we abandon ourselves into his hands,
it is there that we will find rest.
It is there that we will find refreshment
from all that we have done.
And that's what burdens us.
Not by taking off the yoke, not by rejecting the cross,
not by escaping from our duties or from the things that sometimes weigh upon us,
but by going to our Lord and asking him for the gift of love,
true charity, the desire to please him,
and to bear all things out of love for him.
This is in fact what Our Lady did.
Our Lady had her treasure always with her,
who was Jesus, of course.
And yet she knew that our Lord was ultimately headed for the cross.
And yet she persevered in carrying our Lord's cross with him out of love.
And while she suffered at the foot of the cross,
nevertheless she experienced the joy also of union with Jesus.
We always have that opportunity,
as long as we are faithful.
Let us then heed our Lord's call to go to him
and to find refreshment in him.
And let us be grateful for the revelation of God's hidden mysteries
to those who are willing to be humble.
May we always be humble.
May Our Lady give us this grace
and allow us always to follow Jesus
and find joy in his service.
Amen.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!