St. Kateri
Fr. Philip Neri Powell,
OP
St Dominic, NOLA
Jesus
tells the disciples that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. Is
this how we experience our lives in Christ? Light and easy? It's a
fair question and one many of us ask. However, we shouldn't worry
about doubting that the life we have chosen in Christ is light and
easy. The demands of growing daily in holiness are few. All we need
do is love God and others as God Himself loves us. Be merciful, avoid
evil, witness with our every word and deed the way to salvation
through Christ. The demands are few, but they are relentless –
unwavering and constant. Even the smallest task done all day every
day for years will eventually exhaust the strongest body and soul.
It's not the weight of our work toward holiness that burdens us but
the repetition this work requires that can send us into despair.
Anyone can be holy, do holy work for an hour or a day. But being
holy, doing holy work for a lifetime is much, much more difficult, if
not impossible – well, impossible, that is, if holiness were
measured by what we manage to accomplish in a lifetime, or measured
against the perfection of achieved by Christ. His yoke is easy and
light, and so is the life in Christ to which we have vowed ourselves.
Isaiah shares the secret of being a follower and doing God's work:
“The way of the just is smooth; the path of the just [God makes]
level.”
If
we experience our lives in Christ as a heavy burden is it probably
because we believe that our work toward holiness includes the arduous
task of clearing away the wreckage of our sin. How can I come to
Christ and do and be what and who he demands if I am loaded down with
the garbage of a dissolute life? Don't I need to be clean before I
start down the Christian path? It makes sense to hold that nothing
clean can come from a filthy source. We cannot do evil to achieve
goodness. And this would make sense if we were talking about human
goodness, human evil. But we're not. Isaiah says it plainly, it is
God Himself who levels the steep hills, straightens the crooked
paths, and sets us right by washing us clean. It is God Himself who
prepares us for the work we must do. Christ's yoke on our shoulders
is light and easy not because we come to him as self-made, ready-made
holy men and women, but because the really hard work of our holiness
has already been done for us. All we need do is persist, endure in
the work. And even then we persist and endure only because of His
grace.
If
Christ's yoke is heavy and difficult around our necks it is likely
because we ourselves weigh it down, because we ourselves have tried
to put it on without Christ's help. Knowing that only Christ forgives
us our sins, does it make sense to believe that we are burdened by
sin and that we must come to Christ cleansed of that sin? Can sin
remove sin? If you believe that you cannot take on Christ's yoke
until you are strong enough to bear it, then how do you get strong
enough w/o Christ? Can weakness strengthen weakness? Obviously not.
The burden our Lord lifts is not only the actual sin that we carry
but also the heavy and false belief that the job of lifting this
burden is ours alone. It is not. Never has been. It is God's job to
smooth the steep hills and straighten the crooked paths. Let Him do
His work. It is your job to travel His smoothed-out,
straightened-upped Way. Now, that your work is light and easy and the
yoke around your neck is a joy, count yourself among the loved ones
of the Lord, hurry to Him and find your rest.
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