W
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e may say that the souls of the two Cistercian
saints we have celebrated this week—the 13th-century St Lutgarde of
Aywières and the 20th-century Blessed Marie-Joseph Cassant—were
clearly yoked to Jesus. Our
celebration of their lives and holiness earlier this week has prepared us for
this great feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, their Master. Yoked to Jesus and carrying with him
the sweet burden of the redeeming Cross, the disciple comes to learn the truth
of God by constant association with the Heart of God. In such close proximity,
the disciple can hear its secret throbbing, and gradually comes to share a
common task with the Redeemer, who has come to serve and not to be served.
Those initiated by the Son into the secrets of the
Father must share the burdens of the Son's task, the toil and the chafing of
the "yoke" of the Incarnation. The double interior knowledge of
Father and Son that the disciple was promised in verse 27 is here communicated
tangibly by the disciple’s intimate association with the person of Jesus.
"Take my yoke upon you and learn from me", Jesus declares: the kind
of education intended by the Savior is not based on an abstract doctrine or a
certain method to interpret Scripture; it is to be an education of the heart. Its first condition is the assuming of the
yoke of obedience that establishes the disciple as suffering servant alongside
the Lord’s one Suffering Servant. Only then can the disciple begin to learn.
When two oxen are yoked together, drawing the plough
and furrowing the land, they must keep to the same pace, exert a balanced
amount of energy, proceed toward the same goal. By sharing patiently in the
earthly task of redemption that the Lord of Glory has made his own, the
disciple is initiated into living the eternal divine life that belongs to his
Master by nature. The goal of redemption is that, through union with the Son,
"you may become the sons of your Father" (5:45). "Learn from me" means that the difference
between the school of Jesus and all other schools of spirituality is that here the Teacher is the Doctrine. In Jesus
there is no separation between theory and practice, between intention and deed,
between God and man. He is the incarnate Word, the Father's Doctrine made
flesh, to be adored, embraced, and consumed as nourishment. The
"school" in which the Lord invites his disciple to be joined to him
is the wide field of the world, awaiting the sowing of the Word.
The whole purpose of Jesus’ mission is to
communicate the qualities of his nature to as many as will adhere to him in
love. In this invitation learn from me
Jesus also stresses the necessity for us to contemplate his person and acquire
an intimate experience of his life in order to come to know the Being of God.
In the Heart of Jesus we discover with amazement that at the center of the
Divine Being, and therefore at the very center of Reality, there dwell
Gentleness and Humility. Such is the innermost secret of the Creator God and
King of the Universe: that at the very Heart of the divine Omnipotence there is
at work an infinite tenderness and compassion.
It is no mere paradoxical game to say that in Jesus
we witness the coincidence of divine omnipotence with lowly humility and
submissiveness of heart. Jesus is not indiscriminately obedient or submissive.
He is submissive only to the will of his Father: his very glory consists in
proclaiming and enacting the Father's will in the world. Such radically
exclusive submission, such unity of purpose in humility and obedience, results
in an outpouring (in him and through him) of the power and goodness of the
Father. Jesus' lowliness of heart is the unsurpassable empowerment of man.
Everlasting love is revealed in him as the wellspring and source of all God's
creative energies. After becoming privy through experience to such a
revelation, and if our search is sufficiently persevering and profound, we will arrive at the Heart of the World,
overflowing with life like an abundant spring. Only here can Life be drunk.
The concrete manner in which the disciple discovers
the nature of God in Jesus is by learning from him how to bear the yoke of the
divine will, and this we learn only by bearing it together with him. Jesus' yoke is also chrêstós - "easy to bear". This is because his gentleness,
the joy of his company, makes it a pleasure to bear his yoke as Redeemer with
him. He is not a ploughing partner who will be dragging us violently and
arbitrarily all over the field! He understands the sorrows and burdens that are
ours as we strive to please his Father. He understands our shortcomings and
weaknesses and stops to rest when we need respite. He compensates for our
inabilities and encourages us when we want to go no farther. And he can be
"gentle" in this compassionate way because he has not asked us to do
anything he is not himself doing already, is not asking us to suffer anything
he has not himself already suffered. In fact, it is because Jesus has suffered
all things in advance of us that he can communicate to us his own enabling power.
And you will
find rest for your souls
Jesus is himself the divine Torah: he is both the
Way to what is good and that divine Good itself. If "rest" is the
fully realized condition of a thing once it has reached the supreme fulfillment
of its nature, then true rest can be found by man only in Jesus. In verse 28,
with the verb anapáusô ("I will
restore" or "grant rest"), Jesus promises that he himself will
confer this rest by relieving us from all undesirable burdens. The present
passage portrays the end of this fourfold process: by first coming to Jesus, then assuming his yoke, and finally learning his gentleness through intimate
association, we find rest for our
souls. The One making the promise and carrying out the action is identical with
the result of the action. Jesus brings our souls to repose by bringing us to
himself, the eternal Word in whom and for whom we were created. He is both the
Fulfiller and the Fulfillment, the Quieter and the Quiet, the Way and the Life.
Realizing the depths of this truth after drinking the bitter dregs of worldly
experience, St. Augustine opens his Confessions
with a cry that reverberates through all ages: "Our heart was made for
you, O God, and it cannot rest until it rests in you," … in your
Sacred Heart, Lord Jesus!
The Sacred Heart, by Odilon Redon. Homily by Father Simeon.
