“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”
             It is such an oft-quoted verse, so full of comfort for so many souls. But what does Jesus mean when he exclaims these words in today’s Gospel? What is his yoke, and what his rest? What lesson shall we learn from him who is meek and humble of heart, and how shall we learn it? I suspect that the answers to these questions vary from person to person, as Jesus beckons each of us from our unique labors and gives us our own unique share in his yoke. But a certain paradox in these lines stands out: how can any yoke be easy, or any burden light?
             The paradox deepens when we consider that the yoke of Jesus Christ was (and is) his Cross. He himself shuddered in the garden before he took it upon his shoulders; he stumbled under its weight thrice as he bore it up to Calvary; he died upon it a painful and shameful death. How, then, can he call it easy and light? How can he beckon us to his side in order to find rest?
              For us in our sharing, we found the key in God’s abounding love and mercy. Our psalm proclaims that “the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love. The Lord is good to all, compassionate to every creature.” This same Lord is our teacher, “meek and humble of heart;” how can he be aught but gentle in teaching us to shoulder a bit of his yoke? Far from crushing us, the Cross gradually teaches us how to love with his own love, for the sake of his love. Neither the teacher nor the lesson is terrifying in the context of his love. He shall always and only guide us along the paths that we can manage, and he shall always be with us to help us bear the burden. It is this that makes it “easy” and “light.”

           “ It’s Good Shepherd Sunday, and after a brief vacation from scripture sharing we all sort of meander one by one into the novitiate recreation room to post our personal reflection theme on the dry erase board.  Usually, we don’t have to write much, because chances are one of us will post the rest of what another would like to say.  
              So today, our novitiate is struck by the confidence we can have in Jesus, Our Good Shepherd.  We know that He is the way, that we are in Him and that through Him we have access to the Father.  Even though the dark valleys He may lead us through sometimes are truly dark valleys, we don’t have to worry too much because it’s safe to follow wherever He leads.
              And what does it mean to “follow in his footsteps” as our 2nd reading for the day has it?  I asked the question to myself, and I found myself being answered directly by Sr. Mary Veronica.  Jesus calls us countless times throughout the course of our life.  But the meaning of His call seems to change depending on where we’re at with Him on our journey.
               I like St. Peter a lot.  He turned out to be such a good shepherd to Christ’s flock because he, himself, had a lot of experience with learning what it means to follow Him.  Our Lord called Peter to follow Him at the beginning of His ministry, and Peter was so up to the challenge and so eager to find out more that he left his nets, his boat, house and home to follow Jesus.  Did he ever get excited wondering what was in store for him since he was so close to Jesus?  Sometime after he had gotten used to being a leader among the apostles and disciples, he tried to lead Jesus away from His Passion.  (Jesus had strong words in response… “Get behind me Satan!”)  Then, at the last supper, Peter declares that he will follow the Lord to death, only to be bitterly heartbroken at his utter failure when the test came.  Then after the resurrection there comes the same call to Peter from Jesus, “Follow me.”
               I think it’s particularly meaningful that this call came after Peter had gone back to fishing—his comfort zone.  How did Peter feel now about this invitation?  I venture to say that Peter understood something differently about what it meant to follow Jesus because Peter, after Jesus’ Passion, death and resurrection, had a deeper and more enlightened understanding of who Jesus is.  Maybe now he knew that following Jesus isn’t an immediate experience of glory.  He knew through experience that following Jesus means going through the Passion with Jesus with patient faith, hope and love so that we will be glorified with Him.  And not only had Peter seen who Jesus is, he had also deeply experienced his own weakness and failure and had a deeper self-knowledge as a result.
               But we know that Peter still chose to follow Jesus.  And later, when he came to the dark valley once again, he followed Jesus through the Passion into glory.  What is the strength that enables us to follow the Good Shepherd through the dark valley?  Maybe humility and total confidence in the strength and love of the Lord.

           “I AM the Resurrection and the Life,” the Lord proclaims to us this Sunday, “I will open your graves and have you rise from them, O my people! I will put my Spirit in you that you may live!” What hopeful words to us who so often cry to Him “out of the depths,” wondering if He “hears the voice of our supplication.” We discover in all our readings, and especially in our Gospel, that the Lord does indeed hear our cry, He heeds it, He takes it up as His own, and He conquers the powers that hold us in death.
           When do I raise my voice in a cry “out of the depths?” In the psalm, “the depths” connote Sheol, the place of the dead, as well as the depths of human anguish, and from the psalm’s own words, we know that this is the anguish of a soul who has died the death of sin. This poignant song is a perfect backdrop to the story of Lazarus’ death and resurrection, for we are each a Lazarus in the eyes of God. We have all died of sin, but no matter how long we have been in the tomb and no matter how much we stink, God loves us and desires to give us fullness of redemption. He hears our cry, and in His love He is moved to pity us.
           “See how He loved him,” is what the onlookers say of Jesus and the dead man. See how much He loves you! Having heard of your anguish, your bondage, your darkness, “He became perturbed and deeply troubled…and Jesus wept.” In His anger at a death that never should have been, He rebukes those who have bound and imprisoned you: “Take away the stone! Untie him and let him go!” And He calls you forth to life.
            In our sharing, we actually spent a good chunk of time looking at the figure of Mary, who falls at the feet of Jesus in supplication for her brother. John tells us that “Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and dried his feet with her hair;” perhaps, then, she knows what it is like to cry “out of the depths,” and to receive mercy and new life. She knows that Jesus is able to grant that same new life to her brother, and so she cries to the Lord on his behalf. It is her supplication that draws forth Jesus’ compassion and miracle; it is because she fell at His feet that Lazarus is brought back to life and that many of the Jews begin to believe in Jesus! We realize the power of a single prayer, a single act of love, a single act of faith. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died, but even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”
            Amen. May we all pray with the confidence of Jesus, Martha, and Mary! This is the trustworthiness and love of God for you!       

This Sunday we came into the recreation room to write down the themes that stood out to us in our liturgy this week. Somehow we all ended up gathered around a Dictionary looking at translations for the Greek word for “worship.” I have found that Dictionaries can actually be quite entertaining since I came to St. Joseph’s, though I must say that Greek dictionaries are a new thing that came with Sr. Cecilia Maria, our classical language scholar!

Anyway, our themes for this week centered very much around faith and paradoxes as Jesus restores the blind man’s sight by anointing his eyes with mud and sending him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. Why did Jesus first cover his already blind eyes with dirt before healing them? Could it be that sometimes he has to make us blind, or more blind rather, so that He can give us true sight? Much of the time we do not know the extent of our own blindness, though, do we? So deep that St. Paul can say in his Epistle to the Ephesians, “You were once darkness.” But he follows by saying, “but now you are light.” And we know that this transformation is what happens when we say “I do believe” to the Lord’s word.

Another theme that struck us was the way in which this blind man was sent to wash in the pool to be healed. It occurred to us that this poor blind man didn’t really meet Jesus (or see him, for that matter) until after he had been thrown out of the synagogue. He had his sight, and he was expelled from the synagogue for testifying to the facts and appealing to the reason of those who questioned him. This man had just lost an important part of his standing before God and Jewish society. However, we know that there is much more than loss happening here— because after he is expelled, Jesus comes and finds him. Then this man comes to faith in Jesus as the messiah. So in being rejected on one level, this man was actually being sent to Christ, the living water and the light of the world.