In her book Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich says this: “God, of your goodness, give me yourself… If I ask for anything less, I shall always be in want. Only in you do I have it all.”[1]
I was drawn to this lovely saying through the very pastoral, well-known comforting words of today’s gospel passage, which are unique, by the way, to the gospel of Matthew, words that find themselves set to music in Handel’s Messiah and put into spoken word in our Book of Common Prayer, in our funeral liturgy, and this St Francis Day.
When Jesus is saying his yoke is easy and light, he is speaking into those contexts: a well-understood agricultural image about oxen sharing the burden of their labours, so that together the task is lighter than done alone; a burdensome following of the Law that deprives life rather than gives it; and an economic and political system that diminishes people rather than fulfils them.
[1] Quoted in Jane Williams Liturgical Reflections, p.89
