Homily: 14th Sunday

Homily 14th Sunday:   O.T.   A    SBC   2026   Mt 11:25-30     Zec 9:9-10     Rom 8:9.11-13
focus: We may hand over our burdens our troubles and burdens to Jesus and rest with him.
function: This strengthens us for living according to His teaching and example.

“I will give you rest from all your enemies,” God says to King David in the Old Testament. The promise is being fulfilled. David gains victory over the neighboring peoples and establishes his kingdom. 
He can rest mainly because of his military strength. 

The Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaims is quite different!
The early Church saw Jesus’ way of being king symbolized by his entry into Jerusalem riding on an ass, not on a horse
like the Romans, the ruling power at the time, would do after a victory, leading prisoners behind them from the defeated army.
An ass wasn’t an animal to ride on in combat.
Jesus didn’t present himself at all as the leader of an army, nor even of a guerilla group.

Rather Jesus had experienced inner strength and radiated it to a degree that he had no need for weapons and armor.
People could feel secure with him and find rest with him because of his inner freedom that nobody and nothing could take away from him.

Jesus must have instilled in his listeners and followers a longing for this inner strength and freedom when he said,
“Come to me all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest.”

Who were the people who actually did come to Jesus?
Mainly ordinary folks, the largely uneducated and simple population of Galilee.
They flocked in great number to access his healing power. 
Their overall  positive response implies revelation from God, since, lacking expertise in such matters, they had no other means of knowing and understanding. 

The Pharisaic teachers, on the other hand, through the way they interpreted the Torah, the law of Moses, according to their tradition, imposed heavy burdens upon others.
Their many rules, their 613 commandments and prohibitions, couldn’t be kept by many ordinary people because of the way they had to earn their living. 
We only have to think of shepherds and ass drivers. They largely lived outdoors and found it hard to keep all the required purity laws. 

Jesus in turn proposes his ‘yoke’ to them that is easy, his burden that is light.
He is happy about all who receive and accept his message:
“I give praise to you, Father.” You, the Lord of heaven and earth, have revealed the message of your kingdom to little ones, to simple hearts.
Those, however, who put all their trust in outward things, in possessions, those who are caught up in a good life, those who think they have all the answers, for them it is harder to gain access to God, to the mystery within us and in all reality. 

My sisters and brothers, we, too, can learn from Jesus; and we may hand over our troubles and burdens to Jesus and rest with him. This strengthens us for living according to his teaching and example.

Pope Francis expounded the subject matter of resting with Jesus in his encyclical titled, in Latin, Dilexit Nos, in English, He Has Loved Us.
In Jesus, God’s love became visible and tangible in an unsurpassable way, Pope Francis says. He quotes St. Augustine who commented that John, the Beloved Disciple, while reclining on Jesus’ bosom during the Last Supper drew near the secret place of wisdom. There he received strength from Jesus and there he learned from Him, grew in that wisdom which the heavenly father reveals to the humble.
The same will happen to us if we spend time in silent prayer and adoration with the one who invites us with all of our burdens to stay and to rest with him.

This communion with the Lord empowers us, so the late pope, to become joy-filled missionary disciples who bring about a joyful encounter with the love of Christ and who find Christ in every other person.

Jesuit Fr. Greg Boyle is someone who embodies in our time the freedom and the inner strength that come from Jesus.
He the founded Homeboy Industries, which rehabilitates ex-gang members and convicts in Los Angeles.
“There (in prison) we were watched,” one of them said. “Here we are seen, respected.”
Let me close with a personal maxim of Fr. Greg, which we have to hear from the background of his challenging work:
“Today I will surrender into the arms of the God of love and then choose to be these arms.”   (2x)
That’s what the gospel invites us to today.                                                   
AMEN.

 ~ Fr. Thomas, OSB