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| Our Lady of Mount Carmel |
(Audio)
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
Apart from Jesus we work too hard. We invest effort in what cannot satisfy us. We attempt to achieve our own salvation, even if we don't necessarily realize that is our underlying motivation, but we fail.
We conceived and writhed in pain,
giving birth to wind;
Salvation we have not achieved for the earth,
the inhabitants of the world cannot bring it forth.
Jesus is calling us to something that is more like peace, rest, and healing than gritting our teeth and putting in work. This is not to say that people observing us might not wonder how we accomplish so much, how we seem to need so little for ourselves. Yet subjectively it won't seem like us to us, for the LORD is working in us.
LORD, you will decree peace for us,
for you have accomplished all we have done (see Isaiah 26:12).
We can experience an easy yoke and a light burden to the degree that we share the yoke with Jesus. He prevents us from charging ahead and exhausting ourselves. He provides strength when we can't imagine taking another step.
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.
Our strategies are usually too self-centered to experience the true rest of Jesus. We work as hard as we can, exhaust ourselves, and find infinitely more to do. We become frustrated and throw off the yoke. But without it, the work that needs doing accumulates. Even when we aren't doing the work our minds continue to accumulate the burdens of the work still to be done.
No works of ours can achieve salvation. But by grace and through faith God's works can be accomplished in us. When we consciously share the yoke of Jesus we give up our right to boast and take pride in our accomplishments. But at the same time much more is in fact accomplished. We begin live in a way that fills the purpose for which we were made.
For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them (see Ephesians 2:10).
But again, this is through his strength, not ours..
And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work (see Second Corinthians 9:8).
The right response to this is not to make a list of all the works we aren't doing, all the ways in which we are not living for the praise of God, and setting to work on those things. The right response is to come to Jesus in prayer and ask him to share his yoke with us, to take it upon ourselves consciously, and follow where he leads. It is different from a carefully mapped plan. It is a nudge to the right or to the left. It is a call to take a step faster or to slow down. But an elaborate plan isn't needed when we have Jesus to lead us.
And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. (see Isaiah 30:21).
Jesus proposes to us an entirely new way to live. It is a life based on the abundance of the gift of his resurrection, no longer limited by our own human limitations.
But your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise;
awake and sing, you who lie in the dust.
For your dew is a dew of light,
and the land of shades gives birth.
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