By Father Rich Tomkosky
All of us face tough challenges in life. On our own we can deal with them for quite a while if we are in good physical health, of sound mind, and resourceful and shrewd in how we interrelate with others. However there comes a point in our life, not always in “mid-life,” when we hit the proverbial “brick wall.” We see a dead end. We wonder if our life has any real meaning or purpose. It is then that the mercy of God can transform us, if open our heart to Him.
When we experience God’s transformative love for us as an individual, it changes our outlook on life. Then and only then do we see that what Jesus says is true, “Come to me, all of 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.”
I remember the times in my life, especially at 17, when this happened to me when going through some very difficult things; it was then that I felt the tug of God on my heart which led me to really pray in the depths of my heart and to be drawn to the Sacrament of Confession to unburden my soul of the things/habits which were distancing me from the Lord’s love. I then experienced the sweet peace and the inner freedom that only comes from the Lord and His healing grace. It’s amazing. This holds true for all of us, and fortunately it’s not a one-time deal. Jesus’ Merciful Heart is always the source of living water welling up to eternal life. The first part of this mysterious teaching of Jesus is accepting His personal love.
Once we accept the Lord’s personal love for us, even though at times in our weakness we think we are unlovable, then we are much more likely to entrust our life and our heart to Him. The beauty of the image of Jesus’ Divine Mercy should remind us of this. It is in entrusting ourselves to Jesus’ merciful love for each of us that we come to know God as He truly is — the fullness of Love and Mercy and Truth and Goodness and Justice.
One of the hardest things to do as a human being is to trust others: much of human sin and problems flow from this sad reality. The counter to this tendency is to give our heart over to the Lord more each day. How do we do this on a practical level? By embracing God’s permissive will in our lives.
What do I mean by that? Well, each day things happen to us that we have no control over. Some things are big: the death of a loved one, a marriage breakup, finding out we have a serious illness. Some things are smaller, but sometimes very difficult to deal with depending on the state of mind we are in, e.g., someone makes an insensitive or rude comment to us, someone suddenly infringes upon our “free” time, or makes a request of us that we are not ready to respond to, etc. All these things potentially disturb our inner peace.
The solution is to give it over to God. He permits things to happen to us in life. How do we respond? If over time we can train our mind and will to give it to Him in prayer in our daily life when unexpected things happen, we will grow in holiness and become more like Jesus who generously accepted what came His way and always gave it over to the Father. So, the second aspect of this mysterious teaching of Jesus is accepting the permissive will of the Father in our life – knowing He loves us.
Finally, if we want to embrace Jesus’ teaching that if we accept His “yoke,” meaning His way of life, which He promises will lead to inner peace and freedom, we must continue to grow in deeper union with Him each day in the power of the Holy Spirit. We do it first by accepting His personal transformative love for each of us; secondly by accepting the things that come our way as part of our Heavenly Father’s permissive will; now the third response is to pray that God reveals Himself to us more deeply in the depths of our soul.
The Indwelling of the Blessed Trinity begins in our Baptism and continues throughout our life if we don’t turn our back on God by mortal sin or allow smaller sins to dull or weaken our connection with Him. This is why we need to receive the Lord’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist with great faith, reverence, and never in conscious mortal sin because it is in Holy Communion that the inner life of the Blessed Trinity is increased in our soul, which is the seed of eternal life. The other Sacraments bring this about as well.
The reality of the Divine Indwelling is the source of true inner peace, freedom, and joy even amid external sorrows and difficulties. Let’s embrace the Lord’s Heavenly yoke. God bless you.
Father Rich Tomkosky is the Pastor of Saint Thomas the Apostle Parish in Bedford and the Pastor of Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in Beans Cove.
