Sermon 70
SERMO 70
Again concerning the words of the Gospel Mt 11, 28-30:
"Come to me, all who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you," and so on.
The yoke of Christ.
It seems strange to some, my brothers, when they hear the Lord saying: "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light:" and they consider those who have bravely taken up that yoke and accepted that burden with the gentlest shoulders, to be so agitated and exercised by the difficulties of this world, that they seem called not from labor to rest, but from rest to labor; as the Apostle also says: "All who want to live piously in Christ will suffer persecution." Therefore, someone says: "How is the yoke easy, and the burden light, when bearing that yoke and burden is nothing other than to live piously in Christ?" And how is it said: "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you," and not rather, "Come, you who are idle, so you may labor"? For He also found those who were idle, whom He sent into His vineyard, to bear the heat of the day. And under that easy yoke and light burden, we hear the Apostle say: "In all things commending ourselves as ministers of God, in much patience, in tribulations, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes," etc. And in another place in the same Epistle: "From the Jews five times I received forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I was adrift in the deep," and other dangers that indeed can be counted, but can hardly be endured, except with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Whence the yoke of Christ is gentle.
Therefore, all those harsh and grievous things he often and abundantly endured: but indeed the Holy Spirit was present to him, who, in the corruption of the outer man, would renew the inner man day by day, and having tasted spiritual rest in the abundance of God's delights, in the hope of future blessedness he softened all present harshness and lightened all grievous things. Behold how sweet a yoke of Christ he bore, and how light a burden: that all those things, which enumerated above every listener shudders at as hard and immense, he would call a light tribulation; gazing with inner and faithful eyes at how much the future life, purchased at the price of temporal things, is worth, not to endure the eternal labors of the impious, and to enjoy eternal happiness of the just without any anxiety. Men suffer themselves to be cut and burned, so that the pains not of eternity, but of a somewhat longer-lasting ulcer, may be redeemed at the price of sharper pains. In the languid and uncertain rest of the shortest and ultimate life, a soldier is worn down by most immense wars; perhaps restless in labors for more years than he will rest in leisure. By what tempests and storms, in what horrible and dreadful severity of sky and sea, are merchants troubled, that they might acquire airy riches, filled with greater dangers and tempests than those by which they were acquired? What heat, what cold, what dangers from horses, from ditches, from precipices, from rivers, from wild beasts do hunters undergo? What labor of hunger and thirst, what hardships of the vilest and most sordid food and drink, to catch a beast? and sometimes even the flesh of the beast itself, for which they endure such great things, is not necessary for feasts. Although even if a boar or a deer is captured, it is more pleasing to the mind of the hunter that it was captured, than to the palate of the eater that it was cooked. By what torments of almost daily beatings is the tender age of children subjected? By what annoyances of wakefulness and fasting are they exercised even in schools, not for learning wisdom, but for riches and honors of vanity, that they may learn to utter numbers, letters, and eloquent deceits?
By love, even the harshest things become gentle.
But among these all who do not love these things, the same things suffer grievously: indeed, those who love, endure the same things, but they do not seem grievous. For love makes all fierce and monstrous things completely easy and virtually nothing. How much more certainly and easily does charity lead to true happiness, which desire has led to misery as far as it could? How easily is any temporal adversity endured, so that eternal punishment may be avoided, and eternal rest may be obtained? Not undeservedly did that chosen vessel say with great joy: The sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us. Behold from whence the yoke is sweet, and the burden light. And if it is narrow for the few who choose it, yet it is easy for all who love it. The Psalmist says: For the words of your lips, I have kept hard ways. But what is hard for those laboring, softens for those same people who are loving. Consequently, by the dispensation of divine mercy, it has been so arranged, that the inner man, who is renewed day by day, no longer placed under the Law, but already relieved under grace from the burdens of innumerable observances, which were indeed a heavy yoke, but suitably placed on a hard neck, by the easiness of simple faith, and good hope, and holy charity, whatever distress the prince who was cast out might have brought upon the outer man from without, might become light by inner joy. For nothing is so easy for good will as it is to itself: and this suffices with God. Therefore, however much this world rages, the Angels truly proclaimed at the birth of the Lord in the flesh: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will: because the yoke of the one who was born is sweet, and the burden light. And as the Apostle says: God is faithful, who does not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear; but with the temptation also makes a way out, that we may be able to bear it.