“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, 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 yourselves, for my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” (Mt 11.28-30)
About ten years ago, a man clutched the railing of the George Washington Bridge that connects New York City and Manhattan, contemplating whether to loosen the grip in his hands, each moment an eternity as he faced the decision to let go or to go on living. His marriage had ended, his days were filled with depression, his answers to his problems becoming addictions that only brought more pain into his life.
To say he was weary would be an understatement. He was bone tired of living, which was why he stood on the precipice, the weight of the world on his shoulders, no energy left to keep on going, the loosening of his fingers from the rail one sure way to end his misery. But, for reasons he still finds difficult to explain, he didn’t let go. He turned around and walked away from the edge.
These years since, he says he saw three things that made him step away. The first was the sunset over the Hudson River, so full of oranges and crimsons and purples. He found the beauty of that last light touching his wounded spirit. The second was the words from his son that he could hear softly replaying in his head, “I love you, Dad.”
And the third was the image of an old friend and mentor who had died, whose words seemed to penetrate the fog in his head. He heard her say, “Look, don’t worry. OK? Have some fun. You’re not meant to be miserable. God loves you, and he wants you to be happy.” These three things gave the man the strength to step back into life, rather than stepping out of it.
Today, the sacred texts speak to any of us who, like that man, find ourselves weary and heavy-burdened, running out of answers, and too tired to get back on our feet after life has kicked us to the ground one too many times. Listening, we realize that the Galilean Teacher is looking into our very souls, our spirit depleted, depressed, desperate. And he says to us, “Come to me.”
As the living presence of God’s love among us, sent into a weary and worn-out world, he asks us to rest our heads on his chest, tuning out the incessant noise in our minds, instead listening to the steady beat of his heart that pumps divine love into the world, promising us that he will give us rest, by which he means not only repose, but refreshment.
If there is any section in Sacred Scripture specifically suited for the season in which we now live–a season fraught with confusion, uncertainty, and conflict, each weighing down our spirits and stealing the light for which we so desperately seek if we are to survive–then it is these words, even as storm clouds flood the world with disease, discord, and discontent. “Learn from me,” the Galilean says, “for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves.”
For some years now, psychologists have sought to alleviate the stress of suffering that so many people experience as a part of their everyday life, offering an approach that has become known as “mindfulness.” In simplest terms, this approach to finding a measure of relief and rest from the drumbeat of uneasiness and uncertainty that play non-stop in our minds is to train our thoughts to stay in the present, rather than bouncing back and forth between the past and the future, neither of which is in our control.
By living in the present, say these psychologists, we free ourselves from needless worry, fruitless anxiety, and pointless fears. Rather than expend mental energy that does not benefit us, but does the opposite, robbing us of peace and positivity, we find ourselves staying in the moment, appreciating the good in it, grateful for the small rays of light that fall across our path.
In truth, the Galilean Teacher was way ahead of the psychologists. What the psychologists call mindfulness, the Galilean calls a yoke, by which he means his teachings and his way of life. He tells us that were we to allow ourselves to put on this yoke, we would find ourselves less fearful, less frightened, less faint-hearted. Why? Because, as he says, “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
This means that if we allowed his way of living in the world to become our way of living in the world, we would attend to the moment, as he did, not to yesterday and not to tomorrow, but living now, our souls unafraid, unshackled, and undisturbed. We would condition our minds to believe that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the Father’s knowledge.
It is clear that the Galilean had come to know the mind of God, his heart in perfect sync with the heart of God, his eyes seeing as God sees. This was his mindfulness, the mindfulness of God. As a result, he believed that he was loved by God, trusted that the hairs on his head were counted by God, and lived with the certainty that all things were controlled by God.
And he wants to share that same mindfulness with us, that yoke that is easy and that makes our burden light. Were we to take on the mind of the Beloved Son, our own minds also would be filled with trust in God, with no concerns for tomorrow, but for the moment, with a gut-feeling that whatever the world throws at us, we have the strength to face it because we never face it alone, but with God always beside us.
This is the way that the Galilean Teacher lived and this is the way that he invites us to live, not with minds filled with the blaring traffic of doubts and darkness, but with hearts filled with the abiding peace of the flowers in the field and the birds in the air, each one of us put on this earth by the hand of God, whose breath fills our lungs, and whose love fills our hearts.
Some years ago, a woman sat in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, fearful and fretful of the disease that brought her daily distress, noticing after a while a small older woman, somewhat frail and feeble, who had to be all of 80, not a single tooth left in her mouth, but with a smile that went from one side of her face to the other, a smile that lit up the little room, a smile so serene that it looked angelic.
After some minutes, the fretful woman could no longer keep from asking the older woman a question. “Excuse me,” she said, “Do you always smile like that?” The older woman answered that she did. The other woman, mindful of her own distress, asked a second question, “But how can you?” The older woman smiled again and answered, “I live every hour. Some of them are sad. But even so, I live every hour, because the Lord wants me to.”
Somewhere along the way, we could say, that woman answered the Galilean when he asked her to come to him. She accepted the yoke that he offered her and she learned from him, and in learning from him, she found peace for herself, because she learned that his yoke was easy and his burden was light.
–Jeremy Myers
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