Reshaping life

Today’s readings: Zech 9, 9-10; Rom 8, 9.11-13; Matt 11, 25-30.

One of the lessons we learn in life sooner or later is that we need to look after ourselves and treat ourselves gently. With time we discover how fragile and vulnerable our body, heart and life really are. True inner freedom cannot be found unless the body is given time to rest.

The Jesus who is speaking in the gospel today is gentle and humble of heart. Jesus not always speaks in this tone. But here he seems to be making no particular demands, he means no coercion. He is only inviting. He invites us mainly to trust in him and to open our eyes not to be too busy or too anxious about maintaining things as they are or as they have been up to now. Jesus invites us to make life a better place.

What is offered in this invitation is not revealed to all, only to those able to trust and ready to receive a gift. The second reading, from Paul’s letter to Romans, spells this out clearly: “There is no necessity for us to obey our unspiritual selves or to live unspiritual lives. If you do live in that way, you are doomed to die.”

Today we are being invited away from our contradictions. Jesus invites particularly those who prefer to live in denial and to die slowly. He addresses those who are weary and overburdened. He promises rest.

Besides, once the invitation is accepted, he promises that the yoke will be easy and the burden light. He does not promise to remove the yoke and the burden, but guarantees that trust in him can provide a different outlook on life.

What is it that makes us weary? We would be prompted to answer by pointing to hard work or heavy schedules and to point out the need of a break. But we cannot always just go off on a holiday. Even our holidays at times fail to refresh our spirits.

What probably makes us weary is when it is daily required of us not to be who we are and not to live our own lives. As Walter Brueggemann writes in his book Mandate to Difference, we are constrained to contradict what we know best about ourselves and what we love most about our life.

“Ask me whether what I have done is my life,” writes William Stafford in his poem Ask Me. Parker Palmer, commenting on this in his book Let Your Life Speak, writes: “For some, those words will be nonsense, nothing more than a poet’s loose way with language and logic. But for others the poet’s words will be precise, piercing and disquieting.”

We sometimes catch a glimpse of our true life, asking ourselves what are we meant to do and what are we meant to be. In his book Seeing Beyond Depression, Jean Vanier writes: “There is a real danger, when the powers of sadness and inner emptiness, and the need to throw ourselves into feverish activity or kinds of entertainment, control us”.

Our exhaustion is rooted in anxiety, which comes from our mistrust. Today’s readings speak of the need to refresh ourselves as body and spirit. Otherwise we end up being schizophrenic. We are always responding not to the gentleness of Jesus but to the demands of our bosses, schedules or duties, making life seem a futile struggle.

Exhaustion comes mostly from having to put on different masks with different people and in different situations. Exhaustion comes mostly from the demand to be other than we truly are meant to be. It requires too much energy to have to put up different facets, to be constrained to live falsely.

There is no heavier burden in life than the sense of futility in what we do and the inner emptiness that follows. The “come to me” of Jesus can be an exit from our daily regime which at times is simply suffocating.

In the first reading this was the dream of the prophet Zechariah for his people’s liberation from a dominant culture. Zechariah is witness of Israel’s hope for a politically serious recovery. We need to have political will about our own recovery, and at some stage find the courage to stop and trust the Lord of life.