Thursday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Time of holiday and rest
“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 your selves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” Mt 11,28-30
The summer is here, the professional year is over and within some day we will spend one month holiday in the house of Castiglioncello. We will start two days after that Lisalberta will be married. In this atmosphere of pressing preparation for the wedding and of the so many things to be fixed before leaving, we are reached by this page of the today’s gospel: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest”. If ever a proof would be needed, the Lord has marked out the program of the holiday: walks along the sea and holy mass in the morning, some swimming, lunches taken with joy together with sons and grandchildren under the trees of the garden, a bit of meditation and prayer and a walk in the evening, yet at the sea. During the sunny days which are ahead, it will be important to devote time to God, to transform the normal holidays in a real rest of the spirit. Today, however, he asks us to go to him constantly, throughout the entire year, to pray, to listen to the word of God, to receive the eucharist, with which we also receive the yoke of his things, which is much lighter than all the other yokes. When, during the morning prayer, we ask to the Lord why his yoke is easy and his burden light, the answer given us is always the same: “Because my yoke and my burden give to the life an eternal sense, and by this awareness we do not suffer the fatigue anymore”. It is the joyful fatigue of the pious Jewish, who was going to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. At the end of the trip, with a light heart and tired legs, he saw Jerusalem, up there, and began to recite the Psalm 121: “I raise my eyes towards the mountains. From where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth ” (Psa 121,1-2). And with this in mind also the last effort to go up to Jerusalem was a joy. It is the joyous fatigue of the man of faith, gradually approaching the goal, who accepts the yoke and the load of the Lord in meekness and humility of heart.