Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.

Jesus offers a straightforward invitation to lighten our heavy load! How could we not immediately stop in our tracks and respond with gratitude? But too often, we don’t. We’re too preoccupied with mental, physical, emotional, and/or spiritual fatigue. We exhaust ourselves, working harder and harder to resolve our never-ending problems, but at the end of the day, what have we accomplished for all our effort? We labor in vain.

Our Lord invites us to come to him. He gently extends his outstretched hands to welcome us into his heart, carry our load, be our strength, and give us rest. He doesn’t promise to remove our hardships but pledges to walk with us every step of our journey. We so want to believe. We often say we believe, but for most of us, it remains a struggle to accept this truth because to receive the peace that Christ offers, we must surrender to him; surrender our will, our resistance, our skepticism. We must accept his hand, let go, and trust him. Such a transformation of self is not easy.

Many saints spent their entire lives with the same struggle, but Christ understood. He willingly suffered and died for us. He knows us. He loves and cares for us. He wants us to see that he’s there for us. Our Saint Peter Julian Eymard struggled for much of his life until he learned to surrender himself through his “gift of self.” He is our model for the conversion from focusing on our self to concentrating on our God self. This openness allows our souls to be at rest and our hearts to be full of joy!

Let Us Pray:

Dear Lord Jesus Christ. You know our fears, doubts, and anxieties that keep us from experiencing your love for us. And you accept and love us anyway! Every time we celebrate Eucharist, we experience the peaceful rest that only You can give us when we partake in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup. Beyond our human comprehension, we receive the grace to relinquish ourselves, our burdens, and our unrest to live in communion with each other and our God. Let us fervently pray for the trust to believe, accept, and humbly respond to what has been promised! Amen.