Thursday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
(Isaiah 26:7-9.12.16-19; Matthew 11:28-30)
The eighty year-old women knelt beside her bed every
night. Rosary in hand, she prayed for
her family. She did not have children of
her own; she never married. But she
prayed for her sisters and brother, her nephews and niece, and her grand-nieces
and nephew. Did she pray for
herself? Probably she did since her life
was not the happiest. Her solitariness likely
called within her like a broken record, “What’s wrong with you, Mary? What’s wrong with you?
In today’s gospel Jesus particularly invites those who never
married along with widows, the divorced and homosexuals who try to live chastely to
share their burden with him. He will
give them support because he too felt loneliness as a trial. Of course, he never married but that does not
seem to have caused him grief. Rather it
was being betrayed by a trusted disciple and denied by another, being condemned
by the leaders of his nation and being scorned by the great defenders of
justice in his time that made him feel abandoned. His forlornness is dramatically demonstrated
on the cross when he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Jesus also asks us to take upon ourselves his yoke. He means that we heed his command that we
love one another – friend and foe alike.
It seems like a daunting challenge, but it turns out to be the way to
happiness, both now and forever.
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