Daily Mass Gospel Reflection - Freedom From the Self

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 12.07.22 | Bishop Robert Barron

[MurphsLaw]

Memorial of Saint Ambrose, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Matthew 11:28–30

Friends, in today’s Gospel,
Jesus offers to free us from the burden of our pride.

What is it that makes our lives heavy and weighed down?
Precisely the burden of our own egos, the weight of one’s own self.
When I am puffing myself up with my own self-importance,
I’m laboring under all that weight. Jesus is saying,
"Become a child. Take that weight off your shoulders and put on the weight of my yoke,
the yoke of my obedience to the Father."

Anthony de Mello proposed the following parable to describe us prideful souls.
A group of people sit on a bus that is passing through the most glorious countryside,
but they have the shades pulled down on all the windows
and are bickering about who gets front seat on the bus.
This is the burden of pride: preferring the narrow and stuffy
confines of the bus to the beauty that is effortlessly available all around.
This, of course, is why Jesus can say,
"My yoke is easy and my burden is light."
What the Lord proposes is not a freedom from suffering but,
what is much more important, a freedom from the self.

[MurphsLaw]

+++Jesus said to the crowds:
“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.”+++