In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen. I guess it's two weeks ago when this particular passage from Saint Matthew came into the Sunday readings. And for some reason, I looked up some of the Greek. Very interesting what you find out by that kind of wasted time.
And I was particularly struck with one little adjective. Our Lord says, take my yoke. Do know what a yoke is? It was a I wonder how many people have actually seen an actual yoke that was used for oxen. It's a Remember, was for two oxen.
And it was made of solid oak. And that was an most important adjunct to the precious possession of having a yoke of oxen. That's two. That problem in many instances was the sum total of a man's worth to have a yoke of oxen. So, they were precious.
Worth a lot more than just a mere slave. And therefore, the yoke had a fit across the shoulders of the oxen very neatly. Otherwise, it would gall, wound, injure the shoulders of the oxen and destroy them destroy the beast. And these things were tremendously heavy. They had to be.
And then, of course, there there was another log that went from the yoke back to the plow, or whatever it was that was the oxen were to be pulling. Now, I look the translation here is, our Lord says, take that yoke. It's a yoke. It's no fun carrying a yoke. He said, and learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart.
Your souls will find rest. Now we come to it. For my yoke is easy and my burden light. Easy. That's the word I want to point out.
The Greek word for that is does not in my dictionary give easy at all. What does the the Greek say there? For that word that they translated easy. It means suitable, practical, helpful, fitting well. You get the point?
That that gives a tremendous You say, my yoga is easy. What what does that mean? Easy. And as I the the Greek that I have says that that Greek word for easy, they translate it means suitable, fitting well, practical, befitting. Not a word there about easy.
In other words, what I take your pick. I'm giving you what the original text says. Our Lord is saying, if you take my yoke, it's going to fit you. It'll be a yoke. You're gonna carry a yoke, but it won't gall you.
It won't injure you. It will fit you. It will be practical. Now, when you use the word practical, you're you're bringing in causality. Practical means it's good for something, useful for something.
So that when our Lord asks us to carry our yoke or his cross, it's not something done just for the heck of it. We are not a bunch of masochists. It has purpose. It has meaning. That's all in the in the Greek word for that word that they translate as easy.
This is one of the most encouraging texts in the New Testament. Where our Lord said, who who has lived? Let me tell you. Today, the second biggest killer of teenage boys and girls is suicide. Suicide.
In other words, here we have young people in their teens and even early teens, finding life so wearisome, finding life so burdensome that they're getting out of it. And and boys succeed more than girls. More girls try it, but boys being smarter do it more effectively. Nothing like being smart. So, when we talk about finding life wearisome and burdensome, we're not just talking about people 80.
Infants in arms, I don't know how they find life. But the fact is that today many are finding life wearisome and burdensome. And where do they look for where do we they where are they looking for peace? Where are they looking for help? Where are they looking to help them carry this burden?
Well, of course, some of them get out of it entirely. One good shot, well placed in the the head, will take care of it. I don't know how many of you listened. I didn't. I just caught clips of the speeches that were made in San Francisco during the last few days.
And I was overwhelmed with this idea that all we need If you if you believe what you were hearing, all you would have to do would be to elect certain people to have a utopia on earth. I never have heard such unstatement like speeches. They were all welfare speeches for the most part. Welfare in this world. As if as if this was the beginning and the end of everything.
Everybody's talking about change. Everybody's talking about, we can make this the better world. A world that'll be better to live in. And they go on with the the most euphoric kind of adjectives. Did Christ ever remotely say anything like that?
Not ever. All that Christ ever told us was you're gonna carry a cross. And if you don't carry a cross, you're not my follower. That's all Christ said. He didn't say you're gonna have fun and games in this life.
He didn't say this is going to be paradise. He never said try to make it into a paradise. As a matter of fact, he said you can. Not if you follow him. Because if you follow him, you stand utterly opposed to the world.
You know, can't we can't as you can't escape this. What I'm saying is absolutely translucently clear from the New Testament. Absolutely. What what Christianity is concerned with is not making this a better world, but by making us better persons individually. You carry your yoke.
No one's going to carry it for you. You may have a companion carrying the other end of the yoke, but the point is you are carrying your share. It's on your shoulders. And our Lord says, it fits. That's the Greek, it fits.
It is suitable. It is practical. It is useful for you. Useful for what? That's If you can't answer that question, then you Life is not only worrisome, life is not only burdensome, but it's a conundrum and absurdity.
And why fight it? Why? As old Hamlet said, why fight it? If that's all there is to life, dislike. I know a number of people that I cannot give a solid argument against their committing suicide.
There's nothing I can appeal to on their own thinking. But that's not what our Lord has offered us at all. Not at all. Not at all. You see that the point that we don't realize it, we're not living in a Christian world.
We're not even living in a world which in fact acknowledges God. Really, this is no exaggeration. No exaggeration at all. It began in the eighteenth century. And it has reached its full cycle now.
We are a secularistic culture. Meaning, worldly, this world. Not the world of God, not the world of nature, and the mountains, and the seas, and the skies, and the rains, and even the natural catastrophes. That's God's world. And that all man does is to wreck it.
I'm talking about the world of man that Newman so well describes as the world. The Christian stands utterly opposed to that. How do I know it? Christ said that. And he said, you cannot be my disciple unless you take up your cross.
The world will hate you. I have come not to bring peace but the sword. I have come to set son against father, daughter against mother, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law, and all the rest. Christ said this. To be a Christian means that you are set apart.
You are a royal priesthood. You are a royal nation. A people set apart. Saint Peter said that. Let us realize this.
Let us not play games with God. We have a role to play in this life, a most important role. It may not be significant in the eyes of the world, but you know who is significant for? Me. Me.
Because it's for me that I have to face God. I have to carry my yoke. I can help other people. Other people can help me. But in the last analysis, it's my yoke I'm carrying.
And our Lord says, the yoke that you're carrying has been fitted to you. It won't gall you. It is useful. It fits you well. That's what I read into the Greek here.
And to that I subscribe completely. Now, this is not an easy doctrine. Did Christ ever said his doctrine was easy? Did he ever? Did he ever say you'd be comfortable with it?
Did he ever say you would enjoy it? Come to me, you who labor on a heavenly burden, who find life weary, who find life burdensome, and I will refresh you. We don't believe him. We try out. We try a lot of things in life.
Saint Augustine said, God, you have made us for yourself. This is the opening sentence of his confessions. You have made us for yourself, and our hearts will not be at rest until they rest in you. Don't try to prove our Lord wrong. In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit.
Amen.