Yoking Ourselves to Christ through Our Lady, 15th Thursday (II), July 16, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, New York, NY
Thursday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel
July 16, 2020
Is 26:7-9.12.16-19, Ps 102, Mt 11:28-30

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In today’s Gospel, Jesus brings to culmination all of his words and actions throughout the past week and a half about welcoming. It’s the way he puts into practice what he taught yesterday about the spiritual childlike receptivity we are called to have toward God’s self-revelation in his very person. Everything is encapsulated in three actions, three verbs, that he wants us to do in response to the grace of his entrance into the world, into our life.
• The first verb is come. Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened.” It would seem at first a non-sequitur to his words of yesterday, that in order to perceive God’s self-revelation we need to be like children, even infants, and see the Father in Jesus. But it’s not unconnected. The way we are going to be able to learn how to grow more deeply in spiritual childhood is precisely through our labors and burdens, through our hardships and sacrifices. These experiences are those that make us run to God the Father like a young child hearing powerful thunder for the first time runs to earthly parents. Jesus extends to us this invitation to enter as children more and more deeply into God’s revelation precisely through all that we’re going through, through all the various obstacles and challenges. He says if we do, he will give us “rest,” he will “refresh” us. The word translated “refresh” (or poorly translated as “give you rest,” which we are tempted to misinterpret as inactivity) actually means “remake.” Jesus wants to give us a totally fresh start, a new beginning, and bring us back to our spiritual infancy. In Psalm 23, we pray in anticipation of this remaking, “The Lord is my Shepherd. There is nothing I lack. In green pastures you lead me to grace and besides restful waters you refresh [remake] me.” He thoroughly remakes us in his image and baptism and that life is meant to continue. In the first reading, the people of Judah articulated some of the burdens by which the Lord was seeking to refresh them when they said, “O Lord, oppressed by your punishment, we cried out in anguish. … As a woman about to give birth writhes and cries out in her pains, so were we in your presence, O Lord.” But these types of physical burdens were not the only ones being pointed out by Jesus. He was also describing were the spiritual burdens placed on their shoulders by the Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus said about them that “they preach but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them” (Mt 23:4). They were crushing people by their interpretation of the 613 commandments contained in the Old Covenant and the strictures they devised not to come close to violating them. They were piling up duties without introducing them into a relationship with the God who gave the real commandments to train us how to love Him and love others. They were instructing people to carry those burdens almost on their own…  Jesus wanted to help save them from those burdens. He called us to come to him so that he would “refresh” us. But they needed to make the effort to respond to Jesus’ own coming, and go to Jesus not only with our burdens and work but through them.
• The second action Jesus commands is to “take” or “assume.” Jesus tells us “Take my yoke upon you.” Jesus doesn’t tell us to bend down and let him put the yoke on us. He wants us to seize it. He wants us to want it. What’s that yoke? We know that a yoke is a harness — Jesus doubtless would make some of them as a carpenter in Joseph’s shop in Nazareth —  to unite two animals so that they might work in tandem. Jesus wants us to take up “his” yoke and his yoke is the patibulum of the Cross. Later he’ll say that his yoke is “easy,” which means that it is “easy-fitting,” it’s tailor-made, for us, to unite us to him, like the Cross on Calvary was the shoe that fit perfectly Simon of Cyrene’s feet. We will come to know Christ personally, to know God personally, to experience his life, his immanent relations and the relationship he desires to have with us, precisely through yoking ourselves to him. But there’s another aspect of this yoke which is very important to ponder. To be yoked with Jesus is literally to be con (with) jugum (yoke), to be his spouse, his conjugal partner. When Jesus says “Come,” he’s proposing, and when he says “Take,” we’re called to respond, “I take you as my spouse, … for better or worse, in sickness or in health, all the days of my life.” To be yoked to Jesus means to live the spousal Covenant with Jesus all our days, and when we are living together with him, we find that our burdens are light and sweet because of the mutual love with Jesus that changes their weight and bitterness. That spousal covenant with Christ is consummated on the marriage bed of the Cross and that is the way, St. Edith Stein teaches us, that we become Brides of Christ on the Cross.
• The third action Jesus describes today is learn.  “Learn from me,” he tells us, “for I am meek and humble of heart and you will find rest for yourselves.” The way we learn from Jesus is not in a classroom seated on a chair. It’s by being yoked in this loving covenantal bond with Jesus. And when we are living in that union, then we not only learn “from” Jesus, but, as the Greek of St. Matthew’s Gospel says more literally, we learn Jesus. He tells us to “learn me.” We learn his humility, which is the capacity to see ourselves as we really are before God and others and how much we need God. We learn his meekness, which is the self-disciplined tameness that allows us calmly to find our strength in HIm. We’ve got so much to learn from him, but we first must come, then we must take on his yoke, we must spousally unite ourselves to him permanently, and then we will learn from him all we need.
• Today on this Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, we have a chance to ponder not only how Mary exemplifies this Gospel but seeks to help us to live it as well. She was perfectly yoked to her Son and his work, not just through an umbilical cord in the womb, but in a heart-to-heart bond all her days into eternity. She is the perfect Spouse of God. She learned Jesus even while she was teaching him according to his humanity. Her own heart was mystically pierced on Calvary as a participation in her union with her Son’s passion. And Mary seeks to help us to yoke ourselves to her Son by yoking us to her yoking of herself to that same Son. One of the ways the Church has traditionally proposed to do that is through the devotion to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and through the wearing of the scapular. Anyone who has ever formally received the brown scapular dedicated to our Lady of Mt. Carmel has been inducted into the Confraternity that pertains to the Carmelite family. When we wear that scapular properly, it signifies three things: belonging, consecration and imitation. The scapular symbolizes that we have taken on ourselves Mary’s own garment. We enter under her mantle, into her school or seminary. We enter under her yoke. That leads to the second element, consecration. We entrust ourselves to her in life. We transfer the ownership of our life to her so that she may guide us more and more into the mysteries of the kingdom her Son came to reveal. We enter into her meekness and humility, derived from her Son. Finally it commits us to imitating her in her becoming a true handmaid or servant of the Lord, of seeking to help others grow in faith by becoming like her, of imitating her spiritual union with Christ. Today we turn to her and ask her to intercede for us for these graces and fulfill the promises made through the Confraternity for all who devoutly wear her scapular: namely that we may be yoked to her Son in glory!
• The great place where we seize Christ’s spousal yoke of the Cross and learn him is here at Mass. It’s at Mass that Jesus says,  “Come to me, all you who labor and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you.” He seeks to remake us here by his word, by his own body and blood, by his mystical Body, so that in this two-fold communion we might face all those labors and burdens. It’s here at Mass that he says, “Take my yoke upon you.” This is where we enter into a conjugal union, a yoke together with him, from the inside out. It’s here at Mass he says, “Learn me,” as he seeks to teach us and make us sharers in all his virtues. It’s through Holy Communion that we become one with him as the great teacher continues to teach and remake us so that we may together with him bear abundant fruit that will last. Before Mass, the last prayer a priest says as he is vesting is over the chasuble he dons, and it’s all about this mystery of yoking ourselves to Christ in the Mass. The priest prays, “Domine, qui dixisti iugum meum suave est, et onus meum leve: fac, ut istud portare sic valeam, quod consequar tuam gratiam. Amen” “Lord you have said, ‘My yoke is sweet and My burden light,’ grant that I may be worthy so carry [this yoke] as to obtain your grace.” We pray for the grace to carry the yoke of the Lord, to carry the Cross, to unite ourselves fully to the Passion, so that we might love Jesus and come to be ever more like him who is meek and humble of heart. This is the transformation Our Lady of Mt. Carmel seeks to help us obtain through our yoking ourselves to her belonging, consecration to and imitation of her Son by means of the external sign of the scapular. That is the Lord each day seeks to make all our burdens sweet and light through our uniting them to him for the salvation of the world.

Reading 1 IS 26:7-9, 12, 16-19

The way of the just is smooth;
the path of the just you make level.
Yes, for your way and your judgments, O LORD,
we look to you;
Your name and your title
are the desire of our souls.
My soul yearns for you in the night,
yes, my spirit within me keeps vigil for you;
When your judgment dawns upon the earth,
the world’s inhabitants learn justice.
O LORD, you mete out peace to us,
for it is you who have accomplished all we have done.

O LORD, oppressed by your punishment,
we cried out in anguish under your chastising.
As a woman about to give birth
writhes and cries out in her pains,
so were we in your presence, O LORD.
We conceived and writhed in pain,
giving birth to wind;
Salvation we have not achieved for the earth,
the inhabitants of the world cannot bring it forth.
But your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise;
awake and sing, you who lie in the dust.
For your dew is a dew of light,
and the land of shades gives birth.

Responsorial Psalm PS 102:13-14AB AND 15, 16-18, 19-21

R. (20b) From heaven the Lord looks down on the earth.
You, O LORD, abide forever,
and your name through all generations.
You will arise and have mercy on Zion,
for it is time to pity her.
For her stones are dear to your servants,
and her dust moves them to pity.
R. From heaven the Lord looks down on the earth.
The nations shall revere your name, O LORD,
and all the kings of the earth your glory,
When the LORD has rebuilt Zion
and appeared in his glory;
When he has regarded the prayer of the destitute,
and not despised their prayer.
R. From heaven the Lord looks down on the earth.
Let this be written for the generation to come,
and let his future creatures praise the LORD:
“The LORD looked down from his holy height,
from heaven he beheld the earth,
To hear the groaning of the prisoners,
to release those doomed to die.”
R. From heaven the Lord looks down on the earth.

Alleluia MT 11:28

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest, says the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel MT 11:28-30

Jesus said:
“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.”

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