Mt 11, 25-30
We know well that for Jesus prayer is essential. At many moments he withdraws to pray in solitude, seeking explicit times of encounter with his Abba (cf. Mt 14:13.23; 17:1; 26.36ss…). At other times he invites us to pray (cf. 18:19-20; 24:20…); and he even teaches us how to do it (cf. 6:5ss; 9:38…).
But today is different, because after the brief and well-known expression, “at that time,” we immediately find ourselves immersed in Jesus’s own prayer. And, as happens when someone introduces us into an intimate moment, we can feel a certain prudent hesitation, but at the same time grateful toward the one who opens his life to us in such a private instant.
Jesus addresses the Father directly and he does so giving thanks and naming him as the Lord of heaven and earth. He gives thanks “because he has hidden these things from the wise and understanding and has revealed them to simple people“. At this expression some questions arise for us: what are these “things”?, who are the “wise and understanding”?, to whom does Jesus refer with “simple people”?
Situating the text in its context will help us understand it better. During the first chapters of the Gospel, Matthew has been concerned with making known the teachings and actions of Jesus. Beginning with chapter 11 (where our account is found), the evangelist modifies the direction of his gaze and focuses attention on the attitude that each person or each group shows toward Jesus. Thus, John the Baptist still doubts and sends his messengers to ask him directly (11:2-15); some people are not able to see through appearances and judge him severely (11:16-19); and the cities in which he performed most of his miracles do not convert (11:20-24).
The “wise and understanding” also do not understand (11:25). In Matthew these wise and understanding are, surely, the specialists in the Law, those Pharisees who criticize him (12:2), who seek how to do away with him (12:14), who associate him with Beelzebub, the prince of demons (12:24) and who ask him for signs (12:38) without welcoming those he has already performed. Those who thought they knew everything about God show themselves to be blind, incapable of discovering him in Jesus, bound as they are by their false images of a god who has burdened the people with precepts and observances. A god so different from Jesus’s God, the God who loves and liberates, who relieves us of our burdens and takes them upon himself, who wants us to be happy.
It is the simple people who welcome “these things,” that is, the revelation of God in Jesus, his Good News. Simple people are those who place themselves “unarmed” before God, who are able to let themselves be taken by him to the depths, who believe and trust, who open themselves to his Love without questioning it and thus let themselves be radically transformed by him.
In the Church today it is also the simple people who continue to question us and teach us. What care we must take not to burden ourselves or others with heavy burdens that are fruits of intellectual reasoning and not of true experience of encounter with Jesus! Those of us who have the great privilege of accompanying others on their journey of life and faith are witnesses to the weight that many people still carry. I think of young people who perceive themselves under great burdens when they do not know what to do with what they feel in the face of religious norms they have learned; or when they face their sexual identity without knowing how to understand what is happening to them in light of what they have been told in the name of God. I think of couples who do not feel included within the great ecclesiastical family or of those who know they are rejected for how they think. For all of them these words are especially meaningful, and for us the great question: How are we living, what do we do and what do we say so that everyone can find themselves and have true experience of the God who frees and consoles us? Is our life truly a channel for this Good News?
At the beginning of the summer season, when we all seek how to rest more and better, how to soothe our stress and unload our worries, a Gospel like this is the best gift we could be given. “Come to me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest”. There cannot be a better promise for those of us who live in a society in which immediacy and individualism exercise unprecedented power. Also in us, who are believers and think we have a different scale of values, we find their traces.
“Come” Jesus says to us. Here we are! What person does not feel that this Word is for them? Who does not have some weariness or burden that they wish to unload? But, let us pay attention to the other imperatives: “take up” and “learn”. My! On vacation and more work! Movement, burden and learning… surely Jesus is the master of contrasts. And the Master of Wisdom. Because his words lead us, once again, to what is essential. What we need today is not mere rest from work; it is not disconnecting from routine; nor traveling nor consuming more… What the human being continues to need, today and always, is to find Meaning, to order life toward God.
“Learn from me that I am gentle and humble in heart“. Learn from the one who is docile to the Father’s will, from the one who is open to his Word and to encounter with him, from the merciful one, from the one quick to forgive… Learn from the one who lets himself be molded by the Father’s hands making his Project the meaning of his existence.
“Take my yoke upon you… for it is easy and my burden is light”. The following of Jesus, we know, is demanding and radical. It entails the total gift of one’s life. But, for that very reason, it is absolutely liberating and restorative. We hear these words: “take my yoke” and we imagine scenes of slavery and suffering. Quite the opposite! Following Jesus encourages our joy and our freedom, it frees us from everything that is relative and which so often becomes in our life a burden that does not let us live in fullness.
“Come to me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest”. If for everyone it is a gift, how will this promise resonate in the ears of those who, by their personal or social circumstances, find themselves caught in conflicts and difficulties, anguished by surviving and struggling for others to survive. All of them, the peoples of Venezuela, Mexico, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Great Sahel region and the Chad and Congo and Somalia regions…, so many sisters and brothers crossing deserts or seas fleeing…, those who suffer illness, discrimination or violence, all of them we hold in our prayer. That when we pray with this Word that is gifted to us today we do not forget them.
Inma Eibe, ccv