Gospel Reflection of 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 9th July 2017

Today’s Gospel reading is a continuation of the story where the disciples of John the Baptist were sent by John to talk to Jesus and ask Jesus if he was the Messiah or the One who was to come into the world.  When Jesus answered their question He didn’t answer in a very direct way.  What he did is He pointed the disciples of John to all of the different miracles that Jesus had been performing throughout the countryside of Galilee, in order to awaken them to the possibility that Jesus is actually performing all of the signs that the prophets had foretold the Messiah would perform.  So our reading this week picks up right after this conversation, and Jesus does a very strange thing at the close of the conversation with the disciples.  He immediately turns to prayer to the Father and he says, “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children.” (Matthew 11:25).  Well, what are these hidden things that Jesus is referring to?  Well He is referring ultimately to the kingdom of God, the kingdom of the Messiah.  The kingdom is hidden, but hidden from who?  Well it is hidden from those who do not have eyes to see the nature of this kingdom.  Those, perhaps, who are proud or arrogant, who are full of themselves and have a very different understanding of what a kingdom ought to look like.   But Jesus was manifesting the kingdom of God by the way in which He was reaching out in His ministry to all of the people who were wounded and broken and in need of healing.

So after he makes this prayer, He then goes on to say, “Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Matthew 11:26-27).  Again, who does Jesus reveal the Father to?  He reveals the Father to those who are humble, those who are little, and poor in spirit.  And so our Gospel passage then ends with a kind of exortation where Jesus calls all those people who are weary, that are tired, that are burdened with life by saying, “Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

The question that we need to ask ourselves is what is this yoke, what is this burden that Jesus lays upon us that is very easy?  The answer to that question is faith.  If you recall all of the people whom Jesus heals, they were healed because they came to believe in Jesus.  They had faith in Jesus, they went to Jesus and reached out to Him and asked Him for healing.  And because of their faith, they were not only healed but they were also saved from their sins.  The same call comes to us.  Sometimes we carry the burdens of life such as economic burdens or sickness or a disability or maybe our life circumstances are very difficult.  Why do we often bear those burdens alone?  That is the question.  We shouldn’t.  We can go to the Lord, we can ask the Lord to carry and shoulder that burden with us.  And so the Lord is asking us to come to Him and to carry the yoke of faith because the yoke of faith makes carrying all of these other burdens I life so much easier.

Do you bring your burdens to the Lord?  Do you go to the Lord in faith, in meekness and in humility, and ask Him to help you in your need?  We are all called as disciples of Christ to shoulder the burden of faith, and it is faith that is really going to set us free and allow us to live as children of God in the kingdom of God.