GOSPEL REFLECTION, WEDNESDAY, 2ND WEEK IN ADVENT, 10 DECEMBER 2025

Matthew 11:28-30.  Throughout this chapter of Matthew we hear the voice of Jesus alone, speaking, teaching, encouraging, and so on.  We hear about six different ways that he spoke.  In the case of today’s brief gospel, it is with a voice of care and compassion for those who are heavily burdened in their lives by social, political, and economic matters, but more importantly by religious demands.  Later in the gospel (23:4), Jesus said about the Scribes and Pharisees, “they tie up burdens hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.” 

Rather than all these burdens, Jesus invites us to place HIS yoke upon our shoulders, saying ‘my yoke is easy, my burden is light.’  A yoke is a beam placed across the shoulders to carry weights.  Spiritually, Jesus is saying ‘my yoke fits you well; any burden I put upon you is not such as to cause pain and distress; it is not a crushing burden; it is suited to who you are and what you need.’  Jesus’ burden is easy because it is laid upon us lovingly, and we bear it in love if we respond faithfully.  We need to be reminded of this because religious people have a tendency to lay unnecessary religious burdens on ourselves and claim they were laid there by God.  It is essential to be alert to this possibility as we live our spiritual lives.  It is not a matter of, as it were,  lightening our religious responsibilities, it is a matter of finding God’s demands of us.  It is a matter of spiritual realism rather than an inflated sense of our own spiritual delusions and illusions.  In a practical way, prayer is the answer to this so that we hear what God requires, not what our inflated religious egos demand.