Monday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
Blessed be the Lord, who bears our burdens. Psalm 68: 20
Today the psalmist praises our God “who daily carries our burdens,” all that weigh us down. Perhaps the heaviest burdens are the unexpected ones, especially those knockout punches that bring us to our knees.
Is the creator of the cosmos personally concerned with our day-to-day lives? If truth be told, God’s involvement and interest in our fortunes is nothing
new for Catholics. We have embraced this for centuries, but unfortunately much has taken the form of “Catholic guilt.” Are we more apt to see God, not as a helper, but as a sort of angry taskmaster in the sky taking names, keeping score and ready to pounce?
Or even worse, a sort of reverse Santa: He’s keeping a list. He’s checking it twice, gonna find out who's naughty or nice. He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good…
The scriptures are filled with the notion that God carries our burdens. Perhaps the best known is “my yoke is easy and my burden is light,” from Matthew wherein Jesus tells all who are weary and burdened to come to him for rest. And of course there’s the ever popular footprints in the sand legend wherein God carries us when times are hardest.
Believing that God bears our burdens, especially when life brings us to our knees, takes tremendous faith. Perhaps the singular spiritual gift our country has made to the world are the 12 steps of AA. And a current that runs throughout the steps is the phrase, “Let go. Let God.” Some of us take a lifetime to learn this truth.
Author Hannah Whitall Smith tells of a young man bearing a heavy load on his back walking on a country road as a farmer passes by with an empty wagon. “I’ll give you a lift, young man” volunteers the farmer; whereupon, the lad climbs up on the empty wagon but doesn’t remove his load. “Set down your load,” he invites, and the youth answers, “Oh, no sir. It is too much to expect you to carry both me and my load.”
O but God can do that. But be forewarned. God being God, it might not be the way we would like or expect. But coming from our surprising God, who is love, trust in divine goodness and graciousness is all that we need. And that is grace, too!
-Timothy J. Cronin