14th Sunday Year A, 2023

 

(Zechariah 9:9-10; Romans 8:9, 11-13; Matthew 11:25-30)

 

My dear People of God, in the first reading from the prophecy of Zechariah, who lived some 470 years before the coming of Our Lord, we heard him say:  

See, your King shall come; a  just Saviour is He, meek and riding on a colt, the foal of an ass, He shall proclaim peace.  

And how beautifully Our Lord fulfilled that prophecy, not only literally when He chose to ride into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday as we call it, but also by His words expressing the very essence of the mission given Him by His heavenly Father:

Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.   Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.   For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

There He speaks not of the physical --commonly experienced -- rest, He speaks of a “rest for your souls”: a rest transcending all the terror and turmoil of this world, even all the secret anxieties and anguish of our minds and hearts.

How are the weary and burdened to find this unique and definitive rest?

Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and humble of heart.

Jesus’ teaching, People of God, can be summarized as follows: all who are wearied and overwhelmed by troubles -- deserved or underserved -- should turn to Jesus for true rest,  rest for the soul: which does not allow any compromising or embitterment to soil such souls. This most wonderful rest is a rest from the assaults and depredations of sin.  However, it is a rest only for those who will take Jesus’ yoke upon themselves; it is only for those who, by putting their faith and trust in Him and striving to live according to His word, allow themselves to be gradually formed in the likeness of their Lord by His most Holy Spirit.

There are many people today who, far from wanting that gift of peace from Jesus, desire, above all, to feel the thrills of pleasure and excitement, and for such ends they resort to drugs, to glorying in whatever moments of pride, satisfaction, sensuality and pleasure, may come their way; thereby wearying and burdening themselves with yet greater troubles.  For, as those sought-after moments of excitement, pleasure, and exultation inevitably become less frequent and less satisfying, they find themselves more and more aware of a gnawing fear of that inevitable time when -- either through old age or suffering, or even through the dreadful curse of boredom -- weariness will cloud over their search for worldly fulfilment and they will find themselves empty, embittered, and alone, being forced to recognize that what they once had considered best and most desirable has finally shown itself to be both empty and unfulfilling.

And yet, my dear people, rest for your soul is not the greatest gift Jesus offers, nor is it the supreme secret He has to teach us.

You will remember that for the greater part of our Gospel reading Jesus was speaking to His Father, or to us about His Father.  To the weary and overburdened He offers rest first of all, indeed; but for those who, having become His disciples and, through faithful perseverance, have also begun to experience something of His rest, He puts before them the prospect of a far greater blessing yet to come.  For it is His supreme desire to lead His true disciples to a foretaste of the glory and splendour of their heavenly and eternal fulfilment in His Father’s presence:

All things have been delivered (entrusted) to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father.  Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

People of God, “no one knows the Father except the Son”, that we can understand; but what follows is the supreme manifestation of the infinite love of God, namely, the fact that the Son chooses to reveal the Father to His faithful and persevering disciples.  In fact, He makes knowledge of the Father -- that is, a personal appreciation of, relationship with, and responsiveness to, His Father -- a sign or token of authentic discipleship.  True disciples of Jesus should know their heavenly Father in such a P/personal way because Jesus has taught us that, in order to pray as His disciples, we must learn to use and to mean the  word ‘Father’ as He would have us, in the prayer He gave us as the norm and model for all our prayers.

We can glimpse further along this road of true discipleship if we consider the words of the apostle Philip who once said to Jesus:

Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us. (John 14:8)

Philip was indeed orientated in the right direction, because he did long to see the Father; but Jesus was truly disappointed at the little progress Philip seemed to be making, and His disappointment was such that He suggested that Philip hardly knew Him at all:

Have I been with you so long, and yet you still do not know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me?   (John 14:9-10)

Jesus obviously considered that His whole life’s mission was to make the Father Personally known and loved; and, consequently, He found it both disappointing and frustrating that Philip who -- as a chosen apostle -- had both shared His presence and experienced His teaching so intimately and for so long , nevertheless, still seemed unable to recognize the Father in Jesus Himself.

People of God, this awareness of and love for the Father is what Jesus longs to see in us above all else; but it is a shared knowledge, shared by Jesus with us: it can never be our own possession, it is ours only in, with, and through Jesus.  Therefore, if we have no longing for the Father, no desire to see Him, no awareness of His beauty, wisdom, goodness and power, then we have not yet come to know Jesus.  Jesus’ gift of rest for the weary and the burdened is as nothing compared to that which His very being cries out to bestow: that is, knowledge of, and love for, His and our, your and my, Father.

Jesus knew full well that it was His Father Who sent His disciples to Him (John 6:44):

No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws him.

and Jesus the Son longed to reciprocate.  He desired above all else to bring those the Father had entrusted to His care to recognize the One Whose call had led them unknowingly thus far; and in coming to recognize Him as Father, to love, praise and serve Him as true sons and daughters of His, with and in Jesus, by His Holy Spirit:

Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

Philip, Jesus feared, apparently knowing so little of the Father, could not, as yet, have come to know Jesus Himself truly, despite such close proximity and intimate communion with Him.

People of God, how long have you been receiving the Eucharist?  Have you really come to know Jesus: not with mere book knowledge, not with a knowledge of ritual and prescriptions, but with a living, loving, personal knowledge?  If you want to know the answer, it is not hard to find.  Do you love, long to know more of, the Father?  If not, then no matter what facts or opinions you may know about Jesus, no matter how long you may have been attending Mass and receiving Communion or practicing devotions and doing good works, you still have not come to know Him anywhere near well enough.

Dear people, ask Jesus to help you come to know the Father.  There can be nothing more fulfilling and glorious than such knowledge of the all holy, all wise, totally beautiful and infinitely good God, because such knowledge, appreciation, and love, is, actually, the unshackled presence of the Spirit, the bond of love between Father and Son, dwelling and active within each of us.  That is the beginning, even here on earth, of heavenly life and beatitude.   (2023)