Sunday, 7/6/14
Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I
am meek and humble of heart. You will find rest for yourselves, for my yoke is
easy, and my burden is light.”
I don’t know if everyone gets the full meaning of that. I
used to picture the yoke Jesus spoke of as a wooden harness that fit over an
ox’s shoulders, but it is more than that. It is a double harness or yoke, and
it is made to fit over the shoulders of a pair of beasts. Our English word
”yoke” is derived from an Indo-European word that means “joining.”
A lady at Mass this Saturday, looking forward to today’s
reading, recalled how one time I came prepared to illustrate this Gospel. Using
big pieces cardboard, I had constructed a six-foot-wide double yolk. I had held
it up, showing where Jesus fit in under one side, asking you to join him under
the other.
Let me say a word about oxen. In my dozen years with a
country parish in Korea I did a lot of walking to villages surrounded by rice
paddies. I usually saw lone oxen
plowing, but I sometimes I saw them working in pairs.
It sometimes happened that while waiting for someone from a
Catholic village to come out to meet me, I would plant myself down on the grass
to wait. More than once on such occasions, I found myself sharing that spot of
grass with an ox whose owner was off somewhere. From those times my notebooks
are enriched with my pencil drawings of those magnificent beasts. They are
unbelievable combinations of docility and strength.
In his parable Jesus compares himself to an old ox who is
there under the yoke along with you in any good task you are working at. He is
telling you that he has learned how to live happily through his days by never
going against his master’s directions. He asks you to let him show you how to
keep your cool by never fighting against God’s will.
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