Today’s readings: Zechariah 9, 9-10; Romans 8, 9.11-13; Matthew 11, 25-30.
Today’s Scriptures speak about the healing power of religion in our lives. Having faith is not about understanding the trinity of God or being able to argue that God exists or proving there is life after death. Faith, according to today’s gospel text, is more about finding rest for our soul, not succumbing to hardships, and seeking not to fall prey to despair.
In a text from Matthew, which is of central importance, Jesus acknowledges that life can be gloomy, but reassures that his presence can really be a source of solace. True religion in our life is meant to ease the yoke and heal the wounds, even though Jesus blessing the Father for making himself present, and the prophet Zechariah invoking joy of heart and soul may sound provoking for whoever is going through a dark patch.
Author Barbara Brown Taylor makes a lot of sense when she writes that “God puts out our lights to keep us safe because we are never more in danger of stumbling than when we think we know where we are going”. For too long we thought that we knew it all about God. We belonged to a religion that had transformed itself into a mechanism of grace and which formulated its core beliefs in high-flown language inaccessible to simple and less complicated minds.
Our minds were at rest with our elaborated theologies and teachings which we simply sought to pack in our children’s heads, thinking it was the way how to make them believe. That was light years away from the way laid down in the Gospel. It is not with knowledge that we can decipher the deep mysteries of life but with wisdom, which is different from knowledge.
Throughout the centuries there have always been those who committed themselves to the Gospel and through their witness made it the more credible. But there was also the other narrative of so many who argued vehemently that it did not make sense. If we want to secure the transmission of faith to present and future generations, we need to recover a fresh outlook on religion more capable of responding to our human longings.
As in today’s gospel, God addresses mainly those “who labour and are overburdened”, those with a restless heart and who long for peace of mind and heart. It is to the heart rather than to the mind that He reveals Himself.
In his letter to the Romans, St Paul speaks about the domain of the body and that of the spirit. We have always explained this dynamic of Christian life in terms of a spiritual combat, usually seen as expressing all that is carnal in our life as being opposed to the spiritual. I would not exclude completely the element of ‘combat’ in living up to the standards of the Gospel. But we should not continue to translate this as violence against the body, or whatever is bodily, in the usual dualistic manner.
In the context of St Matthew’s gospel, Jesus speaks of “the yoke that is easy and the burden that is light” to contrast the yoke of the law with which the Pharisees burdened people. Religion, since the time of the Pharisees, has been heaped with futile burdens that actually do not help. The “Come to me” and “learn from me” of Jesus is a parting of company with the old religion which had failed to offer healing.
The gospel is more than a gripping story; it is a ‘tipping point’, resembling more a social contagion rather than just a teaching or a set of rules to be adhered to, at times even mechanically. The declaration of Jesus about the Father who reveals Himself to the humble is an important key about how we can be touched and healed by God’s presence.