Saturday, September 3, 2022
Memorial of Saint Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Suffer the sweet yoke of Jesus
Jesus said to the Pharisees, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”
At this moment Jesus was with his disciples walking through a beautiful yellow field of wheat. His disciples were picking heads of grain, rubbing them in their palms, and eating the ripe wheat. But today was Sabbath Day, and the Pharisees were shocked.
Shocked, I tell you!
Elsewhere Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” And did the Pharisees agree? Clearly not. The rules matter most. If we disregard the fourth commandment, the others will fall as well. They were convinced of that.
What does the Lord require? Nothing less than everything. Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8) And after all, God wrote the Ten Commandments with his finger on two tablets carried by Moses. The Pharisees saw God through a lens of obedience, as we all should. But as Margaret often says, they understood everything except the point. And the point the Pharisees missed is that our actions as individuals in the human family are intended to point us toward God and toward each other in love. That’s all that matters.
Jacques Phillippe wrote a short book, In the School of the Holy Spirit. He writes about this (p. 56):
God is a Father, and he is certainly a demanding one because he loves us and invites us to give him everything. But he is not an executioner. He very often leaves us to our free choice. When he requires something of us, it is to help us grow in love.
The only commandment is to love. We can suffer for love, but we can also rejoice in love and rest in love. It is a trap of our imagination or of the devil to picture a life spent following God as something imprisoning, in complete, constant contradiction with all our own desires, even the most legitimate ones.
God’s aim is not to complicate our lives, but ultimately to make them simpler. Docility to God sets our hearts free and expands them.
Doesn’t that make all kinds of sense in heaven?
But then we walk too long around the world, and it doesn’t make sense any more, because we so quickly join those around us in condemnation and judgment – of ourselves, of the ones we love the most, and all the rest. We need those ten commandments to bolster our judgments!
Hmmm. We need help here, Lord. What do you think, Jacques Phillippe?
Docility to God sets our hearts free and expands them.
You said that already, and I resisted that word “docile.” It sounds so passive. But then I looked it up: “the quality of being quiet and easy to influence, persuade, or control. Teachable.”
And I realize, that’s it exactly.
“My yoke is easy, my burden is light.” The more we journey in docility to the Holy Spirit, the less painful and forced, the freer and more spontaneous our adherence to God’s will becomes.”
In Austin we are blessed to live in a community full of Hispanics, whites, black people and Asians, among others. I the WASP, the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant male, am in a distinct minority but that minority has so much power and wealth. My status as a baby boomer sets me back even more in the “docility” ranking. This is not a good thing.
But I can learn so much just by watching and imitating the way others, less privileged, live and respond to those around them. I want to learn. I want to feel the yoke of Jesus on my shoulders, and notice immediately how light it is.
None of you must be inflated with pride in favor of one person over against another.
Paul goes on to admonish his “beloved children,” because they were doing just that. No good would come from it. In my own mind and heart, whatever pride I take from my position holds me at arm’s length from the yoke of Jesus. And I want to let that pride go, right now.
(1 Corinthians 4, Psalm 145, John 14, Luke 6)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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