The Catholic Calendar for Thursday, July 15, 2004
Thursday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
St. Bonaventure, religious, bishop, doctor of the Church

Scripture from Wednesday’s Liturgy of the Word:
Isaiah 26:7-9, 12, 16-19
Psalm 102:12-21
Matthew 11:28-30

A reflection on today’s Sacred Scripture:

“For My Yoke Is Easy. . . “

“Come to Me all who are burdened.” With what burdens are we borne down? We’re trapped under the huge burden of apparent freedom. This freedom is, without Christ, slavery to sin. We’re completely engulfed in ourselves--our base, unrenewed selves, a slow, deadly poison.

But Jesus tells us to come to Him with all of these burdens--our sorrows, our disappointments, our anger, our frustration, our slavery to all that is not good. He will yoke us in the team. This sounds like exchanging one form of slavery for another. But it is not. The yoke of Jesus is true freedom from slavery to sin and self.

Learn from Jesus who is meek and humble of heart. He doesn’t aspire to the great things of this world, but the great things of the world to come. His eyes are set firmly on the goal of pleasing His Father; and this pleasure comes at the cost of total real freedom. Jesus isn’t subject to sin and was only subject to death because He chose to undergo it for the entire world. We too shall be free of sin and free of the real death--not the transition from this life to the next, but the separation from God that marks a true death.

Come to Jesus. Choose life, choose freedom, choose hope, choose love. These are the choices before us. Say with Joshua: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

- JuandelaCruz
(sriddle415 at yahoo dot com)

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posted by joachim at 4:26 AM