14th Sunday in Ordinary Time A

Let’s take it slow.  Let’s chill out, take a breath and relax on this beautiful holiday weekend.  Let’s hear this message like a jazz rift floating on these sweet refreshing breezes.  What wonderful, comforting words we hear from Christ.  Let us just peacefully open up to these words.  “Come to me all who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon me and learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your selves.   For my yoke is easy and my burden light.”

Just image finding that rest for ourselves in our God.  St. Augustine famously said, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee” in God.  There are moments of rest out there and they provide incredible relief – a song you love to sing to, a book you cannot put down, a well-pitched game.  But all that expires.  Sooner or later the song ends, you come to the last page and the ninth inning comes.  And it is our nature to look for the next thing, to return to restlessness hoping to find the next respite from this crazy world.  What we yearn for is what Christ offers.  A peace, a rest that will not end; that is utterly rooted in forever. 

Ah to rest in the Lord.  We yoke ourselves, harness ourselves to so many things that work against the peace that Jesus wants us to have.  We yoke ourselves to pressure, power, bitterness and competition.  But there is Christ, inviting and wanting us to elect another way, his way.  We all know that we are happier when we choose forgiveness over vengeance, reconciliation over violence, and love over hatred.  But it seems that we are only capable of making those choices when we are tied to Christ, when his infinite goodness permeates our soul and makes hard choices easier.

This search for peace can seem maddening.  Indeed, the gift of happiness and the treasure of elusive peace had perplexed the great philosophers of ancient Greece and the searchers of today.  Yet, as Jesus explains, “although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.”  God has whispered to us the meaning of our lives and the key to our joy.  It has not out there; it is in our heart and closer than our next breath.  What is true has been revealed.  Then why do we strain when we have already attained?

Just imagine resting in the Lord.  Just feel the peace of being with and being aware of the one who loves us perfectly.  Of knowing how blessed we are.  Let us just remind ourselves that this is precisely the invitation that Jesus gives.  “Come to me.”  Resting I the Lord in more than possible.  It is what we are made for. So let us spend a week resting in the Lord.  I will make you a deal.  If you think and pray about resting in the Lord and you become much more disturbed, if thinking about resting in the Lord somehow drives you crazy, I will never mention it again and delete the bog.  But first let’s try it.

 

Let us rest in the Lord.  Let us slow down enough to even feel the gift of our breath.  Close your eyes and be aware of being loved, of being enveloped by a peace created for you since the beginning of time.   “Come to me all who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon me and learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your selves.   For my yoke is easy and my burden light.”  There is enough.  There is enough peace, joy and happiness.  There is nothing beyond the gentle power of Christ.  This is the peace which resonates from within, from deep within the soul meant to receive the good news.  We are truly loved and that love will last forever.  Let us rest in the Lord.