The Holy Prophet Elisha (9th c. BC); Our Holy Father Methodius, Patriarch of Constantinople (847)
Apostles’ Fast.
Read
Romans 11:13-24; Matthew 11:27-30
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
It is probably safe to state that most of us prefer a burden-free life. Is this what we think about when we hear the following petition in the Divine Liturgy? “For the peace throughout the world, for the well-being of God’s holy churches and for the unity of all, let us pray to the Lord.” Can there only be peace when life is burden-free? On a personal level, how many times have you asked the Lord to remove some burden in your life?
Our Lord desires to give us rest, His peace. Paradoxically, He asks at the same time to take on His yoke to achieve that rest. He asks us, His disciples, to subjugate ourselves to Him, and carry the burden with which we find ourselves, and continue to move forward for some work, some action that He desires of us. And since a yoke is often used with a pair (e.g., two oxen), we are assured that He will be with us in this action, in this work.
Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis writes:
The yoke of the Son is the Incarnation. Out of love for his Father and for us, he put on the yoke of our human nature and all that it entails in its present condition. He who was divine yoked himself to us through his humanity, and now he is inviting us to yoke ourselves to him and his divinity. When the Son’s yoke becomes ours as well, his Incarnation becomes our divinization. To become yoked to the divinity and glory of the Son! What greater reason do we need to explain the sublime joy from bearing such a burden? Not only does this yoke, far from imposing servitude, in fact, crush our solitude, our tragic singleness and desolation; but it does so by linking us to the community of Divine Persons. (Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy. Heart of the Word. Meditation on the Gospel According to St. Matthew, Volume One (Ignatius Press; San Francisco, 1996), 722-723.)