I actually had to check my
liturgical calendar to see when was the last time that we had the color green
representing Ordinary Time on one of our Sunday masses – it was way back on
March 2. Amazing, considering that now we are
in the month of July, and that in another month, the children and youth will be
back at school and summer vacation will be over. Ordinary time takes up a good
portion of our Church’s liturgical year, but by “ordinary” we don’t mean that
this time is common place or unusual or not special. Ordinary time, like the other
seasons in our liturgical year, celebrate the different aspects of the mystery
of Christ that we have in our faith. Our readings during the liturgies of
Ordinary Time help to instruct us on how to live out our Christian faith in the
reality of our daily lives.
The backdrop for today’s Gospel is
our first reading from the prophet Zechariah.
The prophet lived more than 5 centuries before Christ’s birth. Zechariah lived in a very dark
period in Israel’s history: the Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed and many
Jews were returning from their exile in Babylon to a very bleak world. While the people wanted a strong,
aggressive, powerful Messiah who’d be able to stand up to foreign powers and
lead his nation back to glory, Zechariah defies these expectations, telling
them about a leader who will be meek, bring peace & banish the warrior’s
sword. I bet the people of Israel wondered:
How could meekness be a strength for our new leader? By being humble and kind, how could
a king win wars and bring peace to his kingdom?
Zechariah prophesied the coming of
the Messiah to the people of ancient Israel: that prophecy was fulfilled in
Jesus. Our world today is much like the
ancient world in Jesus’ day in the way we idolize power and strength. Yet, Jesus contradicts this view of
the world, telling us that although certain truths have been withheld from the
wise and the learned, they have been revealed to the children and the little
ones. Indeed, we as adults still have a
lot to learn about our faith. We are encouraged in our Catholic
faith to learn about the Scriptures, philosophy, and theology. We can have profound insights and
epiphanies from our prayer time with God.
We can meditate on God’s Word out of
our faith, breaking open his Word for greater comprehension and understanding. All of that is good and essential to
progressing along our journey of faith as disciples of Christ. In fact, in the month of August, we
are going to start our new school year of religious education, with great hope
of having a lot of adults participating this year. Yet, that’s not the entire story, as
there is another dimension to our lives of faith: Our Gospel tells us that we
can look at how our children see God through their joy and enthusiasm, how they
see God’s love as the central message of our faith. I have expressed to several parents
how edified I am to see their young children come receive the Eucharist with
such joy and happiness; some of them have smiles on their face a mile wide when
the hold out their hands to receive the Body of Christ. If we live out a faith in which we
try to follow all of God’s laws & try to do the right things, but at the
same time leave out the love of God & do not have joy in our hearts, then
we really don’t understand what Jesus is all about. We do indeed have a lot to teach our
children about our faith, to pass down our faith to them, but, as Jesus tells
us in today’s Gospel, our children have a lot to teach us about our faith as
well.
Opening up ourselves to God with the
heart of a child is important. Jesus knows that we all can be
burdened down in life by so many different things, and he addresses this in today’s
Gospel, too. We can look at someone on the
surface and think that everything is great in his life. However, there is a lot that we bear
in the recesses of our hearts that cannot be easily perceived on the outside. We can look at the long list of
people whom we are praying for in our parish in the bulletin each week: many
who are suffering in their health, who are enduring long-term illnesses, or who
are dealing with the aches & pains of old age. Many in our parish community and
beyond are still recovering from the tornados that passed through here two
months ago. Hurricane season is also upon us,
with the East Coast bracing for the first hurricane of the season. Some parts of the country have too
much rain, while others as paralyzed with a drought that has lasted for years. On top of all of these things, all
of us are haunted by our own personal demons, by the struggles we have in our
daily lives – both big & small -
those things that weigh heavily on our hearts. Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from
me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for
yourselves.” The simple, humble people of Jesus’
day knew what a yoke was. They saw the teams of oxen wearing
yokes around their necks with a big crossbar as they pulled a plow in the
fields. The peasants of Jesus’ day felt the
yoke of their backbreaking work imposed on them, as they worked the land with little
time to rest. On top of that, the Pharisees tried
to impose the yoke of their interpretation of religion upon the people, a yoke
of rigid laws and commandments that often had no sense of God’s love and
compassion. But Jesus understood the burdens of
the poor of his day, just as he understands our burdens as well. When Jesus made the statements in
today’s Gospel, he knew of the rough journey he would make on his way to his death
on the cross. The yoke Jesus wants us to assume is
not one that will increase our burdens; Jesus’ yoke will not increase what is
weighing us down. Jesus offers us a yoke that will bring peace
and rest to our hearts, a yoke that will allow us to find meaning in our
sufferings, a yoke that will bring us eternal life & salvation.
Jesus is not saying that his yoke is
the easiest way to go. His yoke asks us to live a life of
discipleship without reservation. He is not telling us that our
Catholic faith is always the politically correct thing to do. It is important to remember: When we
assume Jesus’ yoke in our lives, we must never forget that we are always to
practice our faith out of compassion and love, to not harbor bitterness and
hatred in our hearts, even for those who lash out against us or who persecute
us. All of us know that this is not
easy, that we will still have burdens that we carry with us in life, that we
will have things we struggle to release in our lives. We will still be confronted with
challenges. We will still have sufferings we
will have to endure. But we also have Jesus at our side
every step of the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment