December 10/Second Wednesday of Advent
Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
~ Matt 11.28
I have always found this to be one of the most comforting verses in all of Scripture. The idea of entrusting to Christ the heavy burdens I tote around – low-grade anxieties and high-grade worries, griefs and disappointments, grudges and resentments – is so appealing. So it’s puzzling that I don’t do it more often. Even when the tote bag of burdens is almost unbearably heavy, I labor mightily to keep lugging it around by myself, largely out of pride. I can’t let other people see me as weak, and I don’t want to make myself vulnerable by admitting that sometimes I do feel weighed down (the Greek for “carrying heavy burdens” derives from the noun for a ship’s cargo or lading). If a well-intentioned family member or concerned friend offers a hand, I reject the offers, insisting, “I’m fine! I can handle it!” when it is painfully obvious that I am anything but fine. There is a better way than hanging onto our baggage out of misplaced pride: to accept Jesus’s invitation to turn our cares over to him (and sometimes to those friends and family members, too). The invitation is unconditional. Christ will not weigh our burdens, or inspect them, or put them in inventory; he will not send them back as unacceptable. He simply takes them from us and in exchange, gives us holy rest, or anapausis. This is the deep, refreshing quiet that characterizes the Sabbath, the pause that restores us beside the “still waters” of Psalm 23 (literally, “the waters of anapausis”). In order to receive this grace, however, we must first let go of the need to control everything by ourselves and instead place our burdens, and indeed our very selves, in God’s hands.
O God of toil and God of respite, Lift from me this day my cares and troubles, and bestow upon me the rest that only You can give. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/121025.cfm
To hear the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, sing “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say,” click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrTZklB-JVk
