Annual Courage Conference - Mount St. Mary’s University, Emmitsburg, Maryland
Transcript of Lecture - Keynote of Conference
In today's Gospel, our Lord makes a beautiful and important promise to us. He says that in coming to him, we will find rest amid our labors and burdens. He invites us to cast off the yoke of any other "master" we may be serving, and embrace his way of life instead. He tells us that if we learn from his humility and meekness, we can exchange our crushing burdens for his peace and joy.
To understand the meaning of this offer, we must reflect on the one who is making it. Jesus Christ, incarnate as a man, is also the God who created humanity to love and serve him. He is the same eternal God who was disobeyed in the garden, when man and woman cast off his yoke and chose instead to serve falsehood.
If sin and error were not at least superficially attractive, we would never have been tempted by them. Serving ourselves, rather than God, can seem wonderful at first. Humanity's first crime involved a fruit that was pleasing to the senses. When Adam and Eve tasted it, they felt satisfied and liberated. They felt like they'd found their fulfillment, casting off a harsh yoke imposed by God.
Only later did it become apparent what they had lost. They were no longer at peace with God. They had stopped serving him, but it didn't make them free. They could no longer find rest in God's promises, since they learned to mistrust and doubt him. They could no longer find life in his commandments, but only death through their disconnection from him. Their "freedom" from God was actually slavery.
Living by self-will ended up being a crushing burden for our first parents. And the human race came to live under this yoke of slavery to sin, as each of us lived out the same pattern of falling before temptation. And each of us, as a consequence, suffers terribly. We look everywhere for rest, for the peace that we lost by choosing to serve ourselves rather than the Lord.
Today's first reading from Isaiah evokes the pain and restlessness of the heart that does not have peace with God. "We cried out in anguish under your chastising … (we) writhed in pain," the Prophet says. The heart "yearns" for God, who is "the desire of our souls." The prophet declares: "O LORD, you mete out peace to us." Only God can give us this peace: "The inhabitants of the world cannot bring it forth."
Nonetheless, our natural tendency is to look for peace and security in God's creatures, rather than in the Lord himself. And we're endlessly persistent in this hopeless quest. Our desire to find peace through earthly things is like an itch that itches even more - the more you scratch it. Trying to curb our restlessness with the things of this world only makes us more restless.
This was not God's original intention for mankind. We know little about what the world might have been like had sin never entered it; but one of the few things we do know, is that humans would have served God faithfully and found their fulfillment in him. We would not be searching fruitlessly among created things for the peace that only God gives to those who serve him with love.
We were made to live in God's peace; and our restlessness comes from trying to satisfy a heavenly desire with earthly things. As Saint Augustine wrote in his 'Confessions': "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Christ referred to this peace at the Last Supper, when he promised to give us peace that the world could not give.
In today's Gospel reading, Christ is speaking of that same peace which is found not in external things, but in himself. When God tells us, "I will give you rest," he offers more than temporary consolation or momentary relief. When Jesus speaks in this way, he is calling us back to the original design for which he made us in the beginning: to find peace in him.
Our Lord has a way of saying things that are personal and intimate, yet also transcendent and cosmic. His words in today's Gospel reading are words of great love, and they speak to every person who knows the burdens and trials of life. But they're more than this. God is inviting humanity to return to the peace we left behind, to come back to the home where we were meant to live forever.
It's also true, of course, that Christ calls us to sacrifice. There are old habits we will have to give up, and new burdens we will have to take on, in the course of taking his yoke upon us and learning from him. The "old Adam," who wants to live life on his own terms, often resurfaces in us. God's yoke does not always seem easy; his burden may not seem light. But God’s yoke always fits.
This brings us to a certain difficulty which could be expressed as follows: How do I reconcile Christ's call to self-sacrifice with today's description of the light burden and the easy yoke? Elsewhere, the Son of God says we are to carry our crosses and die to ourselves, losing our lives in order to find them. So how can we harmonize these descriptions of discipleship?
I don't think we should look to resolve the difficulty by pretending that Christ will make our sacrifices "easy" in the sense of being painless or pleasant. Jesus was in agony during his passion, and we shouldn't expect to be spared those pains as we grow in union with him. So the difficulty can't be solved by imagining that Christ will simply make our sacrifices painless.
Instead, the answer to the question might be found by rethinking what an "easy yoke" and a "light burden" really are. We're called to walk the Way of the Cross; yet we're also told that there is a way in which this path is "easy" and "light." It seems logical to conclude that God is using the terms differently than we normally would. His "easy" and "light" are not quite like ours.
We think of "easy" as the opposite of "difficult," and "light" as the opposite of "heavy." And from that perspective, a Cross can't be an easy yoke or a light burden. But Christ seems to be prompting us to rethink these oppositions. The Cross that he bears, and calls us to bear with him, can somehow be both light and heavy to bear. It can be both difficult and easy to suffer.
Throughout history the saints have said something mysterious about suffering. They tell us that pain and joy do not have to be opposites. They tell us that difficulty and peace need not conflict with one another. God can grant us surpassing joy in the midst of the greatest pain; yet he does this without taking away the pain. He grants peace in the most difficult circumstances, even as they remain difficult.
The saints tell us that this is how Christ changes suffering. He doesn't take it away. It doesn't become easy or light in that manner. It becomes easy, while remaining hard, because of a supernatural joy that coexists with our pain. There's a peace, beyond all understanding, that is found precisely in our most difficult trials. Pain and hardship remain; yet they're transfigured by grace.
The person who loves God, and knows himself as loved by God, suffers differently. The one who suffers alongside Christ, does not cease to hurt; yet his pain is changed. It can coexist with joy, without ceasing to be pain. It can be filled with a peace by which it is supernaturally changed. Christ does not change suffering by making it painless. Rather, he enters into our own pain, and meets us there.
"The way of the just is smooth," the Prophet Isaiah tells us, in words that accord with Christ's statement about the "easy yoke." But it's not smooth in the usual sense of being without obstacles. The prophet says to God: "The path of the just you make level." And it's God's presence that makes the difference. The obstacles remain, but God is leading us. The path is steep – but he's with us, every step of the way.
God will ask us to carry heavy burdens. But we bear them along with him and this makes all the difference. We can't avoid suffering; but we can find God's peace there. We won't be spared pain – but we can have the joy of knowing Christ in the midst of it.
And it's this peace and joy, the peace and joy of knowing him, that makes even the yoke of the Cross easy, and its burden light. It is his presence that makes all the difference. Let us always be mindful of it and open to the joy and peace it brings.
This peace of Christ, available even in the midst of great pain – this is the true peace that the world cannot give. This is the joy that has come to all the world through the Cross. Let us now prepare ourselves to join him there, finding our rest in his sacrifice on our behalf.
