How Could Jesus Say, "My Burden is Light"?

"Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."  (Matthew 11:28-30)

I have read those words many times over the past 25 years, but they really caught my attention the other night.  "What do you mean Lord?  How could Your yoke be easy and your burden light?  You had the weight of the entire world on your shoulders ... What is Your 'yoke'?  Is it Your Cross, the Cross that we are supposed to take up and follow after You?"

And then I started to think about what was most important to Jesus.  His total focus, in everything He did, was pleasing His Father.  Yes, ultimately that meant accepting the Cross onto His shoulders; but doing the will of the Father was the yoke He bore every day of His life.  And He didn't consider it a burden.  (Rather, He spoke of it as being energizing.)  Jesus did have great responsibility - saving the human race - but His mind wasn't pulled here and there, anxious about what had to be done.  No, in each moment, His goal was the same - doing what He knew the Father wanted Him to do.  

I would wager that in the vast, vast majority of situations we encounter each day, we know how God wants us to act - we know the commandments, have heard or read enough Scripture and Church teaching to have an intuitive understanding of right and wrong.  Much of our anxiety probably stems from knowing God's will, but trying to justify going the other way.  Jesus didn't have that.  His yoke was easy and His burden light; He wants the same for us.  "What would the Lord want me to do?  ...  Alright, here we go."

We Get ALL of Jesus

It's sometimes easy to "spiritualize" our Christian Faith and forget its fleshly reality.  What am I trying to say?  We can fall into talking and thinking about Jesus' divinity, almost to the exclusion of His humanity.  But listen to what Jesus communicates to us in the Eucharist - it is His entire reality:

My Flesh is real food, and my Blood is real drink ... Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. (Jn.6:55-57)

Jesus imparts His whole life to us - divine and human.  We become partakers in His humanity.  We no longer have to live in this world with only our broken souls and weak wills.  Jesus gives us His own human soul and nourishes our bodies with His resurrected one.  And we're filled with divine life!