Choosing Joyful Burdens - Homily
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sts. Peter & Paul Parish, Haubstadt & Holy Cross Parish, Fort Branch, Indiana – July 19, 2017
Romans 8, Matthew 11




Jesus uses “yoke” imagery: "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me..." A "yoke" takes two to carry, like a team of oxen pulling a plow. So Jesus is asking us to share his burden, to suffer His Cross with him.

But how many of us want to do that? Being yoked with Christ doesn’t sound like an “easy” or “light” prospect. So we look for what we think will be an easier, lighter path.

For example, I went to the eye doctor to get a pair of glasses as I begin this new round of studies soon. I see almost 20/20 without glasses, but I was convinced that getting a pair just in case would be better than being in Italian classrooms and potentially unable to see well. As I ran through the various eye tests, my doctor asked whether I ever had trouble with catching the wrong next line in a book I was reading, and I confirmed that to be true. But I asked why it didn’t happen terribly often. He told me old me that my eyes are not quite level with one another (by fractions of millimeters). Then he said, “Your mind is inherently lazy. If it can work out the difference to make your eyes seem level, it will.”

This comment got me thinking. How else does not only the human body, but the human soul become yoked under what's less than ideal?

• We gossip in our group of friends  rather than stand up for the truth of love, of dignity, of respect.
• We build robots or assembly lines so that their muscles feel less fatigue, or maybe just fib a little about what time we got to work or how many miles we drove or how much money we made this year before taxes.
• Some of the younger people present know the times and ways to post on their Twitter and Instagram accounts so that the maximum number of impressions are made and therefore popularity might increase with less effort.

It’s just who we are: we avoid suffering by finding the quickest or surest way to rest. And all of the above are “suffering”, that is, each presents an experience we undergo.

• Our eyes adjust to light or level or depth
• Our lips adjust to the direction and subject matter of conversation so that we can remain in the group
• Our minds adjust to find a more proficient way to do our jobs or to cut corners
• Our desire for being desirable adjusts to the algorithms of social media timing, impressions, and activity

But do we think about what these adjustments do?

• Our eyes get so used to moving the words to make it easier to read that when we get new glasses headaches follow.
• Our lips become so used to speaking ill of others that we create muscle memory for it—not in our mouths, but in the muscle tissue of our hearts.
• Our adjusting to an easier route to the end result at work creeps into adjustments at home, with our family, when we listen only for a minute and then turn our attention to the television or our phones; or it creeps into our life of faith when we look for the quickest route to fulfill our Sunday obligation by measuring which Mass might be the shortest, and sometimes leaving after Communion because we think ‘it’s over, really.’
• And we make adjustments in all of our relationships as we chase social media fame by listening less to what our friends are actually presenting to us, either explicitly or just in their manner of being, instead wandering about in our thoughts contemplating where we might take the best selfie with them or how to caption a video.

In other words, in an attempt to make life easier or better for ourselves, we become slaves to ease, to belonging, to laziness, to our own glory.

And this is what is most interesting. In moral actions, we end up choosing to be yoked with one of two people: we choose the yoke of sin or the yoke of virtue. The yoke shared with the Evil One or the yoke shared with Christ.

Today Jesus invites us:

Are you tired of laboring? Are you burdened? Or better yet, what burdens you? What once appeared light and easy but is really the heavier burden of sin? What is one thing you wish you lived in a more Christian way?

St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans reminds us that “if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom 8:13).

Similarly, in one of his Catechetical Instructions, Bishop St. Cyril of Jerusalem writes, “If there is any slave of sin here present, he should at once prepare himself through faith for the rebirth into freedom that makes us God’s adopted children. He should lay aside the wretchedness of slavery to sin, and put on the joyful slavery of the Lord, so as to be counted worthy to inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

St. Paul’s and St. Cyril’s injunctions remind us that we will suffer—that is, we will undergo things from without that are not chosen, and that often cause pain, that are ‘burdens’. So, St. Cyril writes, we can choose: shall we choose “the wretchedness of slavery to sin” or “the joyful slavery of the Lord”?


Human beings are fallen creatures. We tend toward sin like water running down the slightest of slopes. But unlike water, we were not created to run down to the lowest point in creation. We were made for its heights. All who labor and are burdened, come to Christ, and share his yoke, and he will give us rest.


Image: Mosaic in the apse at Monreale Cathedral, Palermo, Sicily (12th century)