Weekly HOMILY for July 6, 2008: "Take My Yoke upon You"

14th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle A
Our Lady of Grace
July 6, 2008

“Take My Yoke upon You”
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato


“Come to me, you who are burdened…”

I entertained friends and family at a 4th of July celebration. Perhaps “celebration” is the wrong word to use to describe our day together.

My friend David, the only child in his family, is struggling to place his mother in a nursing home. My sister who, after 27 years of faithful service to a heating oil company, was laid off and is without health care, a neighbor who is struggling to meet his mortgage payment, and a friend who couldn’t join us because the gasoline costs from North Carolina were prohibitive.

Aging parents, health care costs, mortgage payments, and cost of gasoline – they sound like challenges we can all understand as causing pain, suffering, and heartbreak to us or our loved ones.

It may be that many of us are doing just fine at the moment, but our “day” may have already come or is soon to be on the horizon.


“Take my yoke upon you”

In the midst of this sadness and pain, we hear Jesus say: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

To understand what Jesus means and how he can personally help us, we have to know what he means by his “yoke.”

My guess is none of us have ever ploughed a field with a team of oxen. In Jesus’ day, that was the only way to do it. A “yoke” is the wooden collar that fit around the neck of the oxen and connected them to the plough.

In Jesus’ time, carpenters handcrafted every yoke to fit the ox perfectly. It is fit well. The oxen could plough all day and pull up to five times their weight.

But if the yoke did not fit well, it would rub and chafe and cut into the flesh of the oxen until every step was sheer torture. You can see why a carpenter would be known by the quality of his yokes.

It was also common practice to have oxen in a double yoke. In other words, there were usually two oxen joined together by the yoke and together pulling the plough together.

They would train a younger, weaker ox by pairing it with a stronger, more mature animal.

As a result, the stronger one ended up bearing the heavier portion of the load and would lead the younger less experience ox on.


What Jesus Means

With this image of a double yoke, we can begin to unwrap precisely what Jesus means when he says “My yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

He is saying that when we are bearing the burdens of human life, we need to remember that (1) The yoke was made to fit me, (2) That we are in a double yoke, and (3) That we are not pulling the load alone.

Far from it, Jesus himself is right there next to us, pulling the load with us. And, like the stronger and more mature ox, he is even bearing the heavier portion.


Allowing Jesus to Help

Now, to accept the double yoke that Jesus offers us, and to allow him to bear the burden with us, we need to do three things.

First, we need to admit that alone we cannot handle the burdens in our life, so we have to admit our need of the Lord and his help.

It would be good to remember that even Jesus let Simon of Cyrene help him carry his cross.

Second, we need to turn to the Lord in prayer. We need to entrust ourselves to his power and strength.

If we do not pray, we are most likely trying to pull the load alone.

Trying to pull it alone woul surely overwhelm the less experienced ox and it will surely overwhelm us.

Finally, we need to discern what loads the Lord wants us to carry or not to carry. We need to discern if some of our loads are not if fact of our own making.

For example, does some of our financial stress come from buying too many things that are really “wants” and not needs?

Or are we so fatigued because we are assuming too much responsibility for the wellbeing of another and not taking proper care of ourselves?


Conclusion

To sum up:

(1) We need to admit that we cannot bear the burden alone.

(2) We need to entrust ourselves to the Lord in prayer, and

(3) We need to make sure that we carrying the yoke that Jesus wants us to carry.

Yes, we may well be “burdened,” but we will find some “rest,” because in a certain way, the Lord’s “yoke is easy and his burden is light.”