Start here with the readings for this weekend.
Our Lord presents an invitation to each one of us today and every day: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” I think that most of us long for this from the Lord. But I also think that many of us feel that we don’t find it. “Lord, I come to Mass Sunday after Sunday. I turn to you in prayer every day. I present to you my problems and my burdens, and nothing seems to change.”
In the midst of our challenges and trials, we face the temptation of treating our relationship with God like a transaction: If I put in my religious acts—my prayers, my Mass attendance, my offerings—then the Lord is going to grant me whatever I want. But here’s the thing… God will not give us rest apart from Himself.
If we look closely at the Lord’s invitation today, we see a few steps that we must take with Him to find this rest that He speaks of. First: “Come to me.” Turn to Him, go to Him where He is to be found—in prayer, in the Scriptures, in the sacraments. Then, “take my yoke upon you.” A yoke is an instrument for farming, a wooden device to pull a plough through a field. A yoke often has two parts, for two animals to share in the labor. In the First Reading, we heard about the Lord coming to us. The Lord first came to us in human flesh to take our yoke upon Himself, to bear the burden of our sin and brokenness. And now, because He has done that, it’s our turn. Now He invites us to come and share His yoke.
The wood of the yoke has become the wood of the Cross. The Lord’s invitation is not for you and I to get out of the Cross. There is a false understanding among some of our Protestant brothers and sisters that what Jesus is doing in salvation is accomplishing everything for us such that we have nothing further to do; we just profess faith in the Lord, and that’s it, nothing else is required. But that is not the testimony of the Scriptures.
“Take my yoke upon you.” Come and share in my cross. You see, when we come to follow the Lord, He does not promise us a life without suffering or difficulty, without trials or persecutions, but He does promise that He will be right there beside us through it all. The Lord came to accomplish a work in the world—the work of our redemption—but He will not save us without us. He invites us to come right alongside Him in bearing the cross.
We see a parallel in this yoke with Simon of Cyrene being asked to carry the cross with our Lord. This is the only path to salvation for each one of us—to agree to cooperate with the Lord in His work of setting all things right in the world and in us. The cross, then, if we bear it with the Lord, becomes the plough that tills the soil of our soul and the soil of our world to plant new life that will bear good fruit.
Suffering alone is a terrible burden. But any suffering in life is made lighter and sweeter when we are able to bear it with someone who loves us and whom we love. The Lord invites us to come to Him, to unite our sufferings with Him, to make them redemptive. When we do so, we arrive at the next part of His invitation: “learn from me.” You and I are meant to become all that Jesus already is. Jesus is the one who sets the example for us, who opens a pathway through this broken world to new, resurrected life. That new life is achieved through obedience to the will of the Father in every circumstance in our life. That is what Jesus teaches us. That is what we learn from Him as we come alongside Him in suffering.
In bearing a yoke, the two creatures are very physically close to each other as they labor in the field. When you and I choose to take up our cross right next to Jesus, it brings us so very close to Him that we can become familiar with the beatings of His heart. We can learn from Him the path to life. We can grow in faith and wisdom. But when we reject the cross and turn away from the Lord, we are left to bear our burdens alone.
The invitation from the Lord is not for Him to be our genie, granting our every wish, performing for us however we please. That is not the Christian life. The Christian life is to come to the Lord, to take His yoke upon ourselves, to learn from Him, for the path of life is found only in and through Him. You see, Jesus Himself is the Fulfiller and the Fulfillment. He is the Way and the Life. There is no salvation apart from Christ. We find life only by being willing to stand up next to the Lord underneath the yoke of the cross, to labor with Him in tilling the soil of our souls and the soil of the world. When we say yes to this, we find that Jesus is meek and humble of heart, that He knows our weakness, our sadness, and our struggles, and He is so patient and kind with us.
The Lord is not asking any of us to bear a burden or suffering that He has not carried before us. He has made possible bearing all sufferings because He Himself entered into all of it before us. Jesus Himself is salvation. He Himself is the answer. He Himself is our rest. We will not find the Lord anywhere except in and on the cross. Every suffering that the Lord permits to come our way, He first held in His hands and gazed upon lovingly before passing it on to us, entrusting to us a means for our salvation.
At the end of our lives, when we finally know as we are known, then we will see the wonders that the Cross has wrought in our souls. On this side of eternity, we turn to the Lord with faith, with trust, and with a willingness to be where He is. And the Cross is where He is. If we take that yoke upon us in this life, right next to Him, we will come to know Him both in suffering and in resurrection. And in knowing Him so intimately, we will be saved.
The Lord has a very unique share, a very unique form-fitted part of His cross for each one of us to bear with Him. Instead of rejecting it, let us ask the Lord to grant us courage. In seeing Jesus bear the cross for us, in seeing Him coming to us first, may we be inspired and strengthened to come to Him to take His yoke upon ourselves, learning from Him, and finding rest in Him.
“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.”
Total Surrender 
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