Frackville

The word “yoke” has become a metaphor for something oppressive: the “yoke of slavery” and servitude. Jesus is concerned about people “who labor and are overburdened”. He had in mind some of the strict followers of the Jewish faith, whose religious life had become a burden. Scholars enumerated 613 laws which they enjoined people to keep. The idea was that by striving to keep these laws you made yourself pleasing to God. The overburdened people awaited a Savior. And Jesus invited those overburdened people, who had no hope of observing all the laws, to “Come to Me”. Come to me and follow me, rather than all those rules and regulations devised by the religious leaders. “Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Those words sum up the ultimate purpose of our Catholic life; it is to find rest for our souls.

Shouldering Christ’s easy yoke, and learning from Him, is what He tells us to do. And we can do this in all sorts of ways. First of all, by experiencing His gentleness and humility so that we can love Him and realize His love for us. He does not want life to be a burden. He may suggest we let go in some ways, changing our priorities. Perhaps in saying “shoulder my yoke” Jesus is offering to help us with our burdens… “Come to Me” rather than seeking solace or relief in the ways of this world, for, as St. Paul says today, “your interests are not in the unspiritual, but in spiritual”. Jesus answers our prayers when we ask His help, and He gives us the strength to carry on with a peace that comes from the Spirit of Christ living in us.

The Solemnity of Corpus Christi complements the liturgy of Holy Thursday when Jesus instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper. That is why it is always celebrated on a Thursday. It arose in the Middle Ages as an expression of the faithful’s devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. It was celebrated first as a local feast and then Bishop of Rome, Urban IV, suggested it be a universal feast in 1264. It became associated with procession through the towns and villages of Europe during which the monstrance which contained the sacred host was carried under a festive canopy and the crowds knelt as the Blessed Sacrament passed to receive the blessing.

We are reminded in Deuteronomy how Israel in the past escaped from the slavery of Egypt and celebrated this freedom at the Passover meal. But God continued to feed them with manna as they made their hungry way through the desert to the promised land. And then later Jesus himself at Passover celebrated a meal with His disciples at which He gave them His body and blood, which looked forward to His sacrifice on the cross. At each Mass the past is remembered and Jesus’ death is recalled. But at the Eucharist Jesus’ body and blood are really present now under the appearances of bread and wine. It is the crucified and risen Christ who is received in this sacred meal. We receive life from Jesus, the life He shares with His Father. This food is a present reality; it feeds us now.

On this Sunday in the Octave of Corpus Christi we can reflect on the past, present and future riches of the sacrament and let our lives be filled with Christ’s grace. He left the Eucharist as a way of reminding us of the sacrifice He made. But in the Eucharist that sacrifice is made present for us today and becomes a call for us to share our lives as Jesus did. We go to Mass to show our devotion and to pray before the Blessed Sacrament. And finally this feast can remind us that we are on a journey. We are pilgrims. When we get too settled in our worldly ways and live as though this world is all that concerns us, the Eucharist reminds us of our true destiny. We are called to share in that final heavenly banquet with God and all the saints.

Easter begins in joy but Eastertide ends with a hint of sadness. Just as Good Friday is the day of great sorrow, which makes way for the joy of Easter, so the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord can bring a different sort of sadness, which makes way for the joy of Pentecost. The hint of sadness on the feat of Ascension is something like the first or last day in school, a change of job. The difference between the departure of Christ is that we are called not just to grow as people; we are to grow in Christ himself. We take the past with us, remembering with love the people and the places God gave us to live with and in. even if we have a terrible past, we can still have some hope that out of the evils of the past, God will prepare a greater good.

Faith tells us that all is prepared. There are many days when we don’t know what is to happen or what we are to do. We feel that, like the disciples on the day of Ascension, we are still standing on the road looking up at the sky where Christ has ascended. We forget that Christ is the way. So prayer is not just a way of receiving instructions about what to do next. Prayer lets us go further down the road, without needing to know where it leads. The priestly prayer of Christ, as it is called, of which we hear part in today’s Gospel, is a conversation with the Father where Jesus explains that His leaving us behind is an act of love. It is love because perfect love always means trusting the person we love.

The parable told to His disciples by Jesus in today’s Gospel obviously tends towards the positive end of the symbolic spectrum. As usual we look to the end of the story to see what point is being made. Jesus is warning His followers about being led astray by those who are not preachers of the truth. A sheep recognize the voice of their shepherd, His followers too need to recognize His voice and follow Him. Jesus offers the idea that He is the gate of the sheepfold. It is through Him that the sheep go safely in and out. Thomas objects that they do not know where He is going, so how can they know the way? To which comes the famous reply that Jesus himself is “the Way, the Truth and the Life”. It is very much a theme that recurs in John’s Gospel, this centering of our belief on the person of Jesus. It is believing in Him, recognizing His voice, clinging to Him that we receive the gift of eternal life.

Do we see gates as the threshold to freedom or insurmountable barriers? In his epic poem Divine Comedy, the 14th century writer Dante imagined the gates of hell had “Abandon hope all you who enter here” written above them. When cities were walled their gates were often the only way of entering and so were guarded carefully and closed at night. We now lock our doors much more than we did in the past, and even church doors are often kept locked for security reasons. These fears and habits inevitably make it much more difficult for us to understand or live by the practices offered by Jesus. Perhaps we prefer to keep His instructions to a highly spiritual level, which allows us in our minds to open our doors to Him while closing them to everyone else. Do we keep open house, do we welcome the stranger, do we make hospitality our special care? Do we enable people to enter through the gate of Jesus the good shepherd, and to find a home in Him?

And this is where we find two disciples on the road to Emmaus today. They are disappointed and afraid. They have witnessed the public humiliation and execution of their friend and leader, Jesus of Nazareth. Their hopes have been crushed and they are returning home to safety and to pick up the pieces of their lives. They have heard stories that Jesus is alive, but they don’t believe them. They should have expected that the Christ would suffer and so enter into His glory. However, their doubts are not resolved until the stranger blesses and breaks the bread as He shares a meal with them. Then their eyes are opened and they recognize the Lord, only to find that He has disappeared from their sight. Now they have faith, they no longer need to see Him. They know that He continues to be present with them as they returns to Jerusalem to share the good news.

So many people in the world today think of the Bible as merely a book of stories for children. They say stories of our origins cannot be true as they do not correspond with modern scientific knowledge. Creation of the world in seven days? Nonsense. Human generation from a single couple Adam and Eve? Rubbish. Miracles? Impossible. The people of our generation have very largely lost the wisdom and ability of our ancestors to discern the truth of our purpose as human beings as this is revealed through the texts of sacred scripture. However, we are people of faith in the midst of such an unbelieving society. We constantly hear things that deny and even ridicule what we hold most dear: our values, our moral standards, the fundamental building blocks from which, we believe, a human society can be built. Sunday, after Sunday, as the scriptures are proclaimed and explained in the community of faith, our hearts begin to burn again. Our hope are raised. We try to do what Jesus commanded us to do: to love one another as He has loved us; to keep His word so that He and the Father will come to us and make their home with us. Jesus, our risen Lord, shows himself to us. We don’t see Him, but we believe. He opens our eyes to see His wounds in the wounds of our brothers and sisters all around the world, and He sends us. We are empowered to be a believing people in an unbelieving world. This is no mere story for children. It is the promise of eternal life. But it is only those who have a childlike attitude who will be capable of understanding and be able to enter the kingdom of God.