Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Okami
1st Reading: Isaiah 26:7-9, 12, 16-19
A prayer of quiet confidence, awaiting the dawn of God’s justice
The way of the righteous is level; O Just One, you make smooth the path of the righteous. In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and your renown are the soul’s desire. My soul yearns for you in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
O Lord, you will ordain peace for us, for indeed, all that we have done, you have done for us. O Lord, in distress they sought you, they poured out a prayer when your chastening was on them. Like a woman with child, who writhes and cries out in her pangs when she is near her time, so were we because of you, O Lord; we were with child, we writhed, but we gave birth only to wind. We have won no victories on earth, and no one is born to inhabit the world.
Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a radiant dew, and the earth will give birth to those long dead.
Gospel: Matthew 11:28-30
Come to me, all you who are weary and you will find rest
Jesus said to his disciples, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
I want to start my reflection today by sounding like a medical doctor. My dear brethren or my dear patients, you need to eat healthily and learn to rest.
Many of us work so hard daily from morning to night, we work heavily and eat scantily and arbitrarily. Let us not wait till we break down before we realize how frail and fragile is our frame. Your body needs balanced diet and good rest.
However today I want to focus more on a kind of rest that is more fundamental than bodily rest and that is soul rest. Many of you here, your soul needs rest.
You are weighed down by anxieties, you are getting close to depression, you have loaded your soul with regret, feelings of guilt and shame. You are finding it so difficult to forgive yourself for what you have done and have even confessed. You are living in fear, you are worried, bitterness is weighing your soul down.
You are worrying about your kids, friends, husband, wife, happenings in the church and your pious society, you weary your soul with worries about your financial recession, your accumulated debts, the things you have to fix at home and your vehicle, the state of your relationship with God, your aging parents, your future, house maintenance, health, job, education, relationship, your workers and co-workers, your in-laws, delayed blessings, performance at work and school, your step children, ex-spouse etc.
How are you trying to deal with your situations?
Some of you try to calm yourself by seeing movies, some of you just eat and eat without moderation, some of you take pills to jack you up or settle you down, so many bow to the dictatorship of alcohol, some of you are now into illegal drugs, you need to feel high even when you are actually so low, when some of you are overwhelmed by your problems you go to clubs, hotels and some even create demonic fun by masturbating.
Jesus is telling you three things today.
A. Only God can give your soul rest. All these other measures will suppress and eventually escalate your distress.
This is what Isaiah reaffirms in today’s first reading “my soul yearns for you in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks you” and he later added “O Lord, you alone will ordain peace for us.”
B. Jesus says shoulder my yoke.
That is, go shoulder to shoulder with me, become my yoke-mate and let us pull the loads. Jesus is inviting you to partnership, a relationship, and a fellowship. He says let’s move together, same direction, same pace, the burden on your soul will become lighter because there is nothing you and I cannot handle.
C. Learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart.
Many times when we are troubled, we become very aggressive and arrogant. We are angry with everybody, we flare up, we think we are wiser than everybody, we want to do it our way, and we start blaming ourselves, everybody including God.
Jesus is telling you that wisdom that can bring about solution lies in gentleness, calmness, faith, humility and trust.
LET US PRAY
Lord Jesus, you have invited us and we are here, lighten the burden on our souls, let us feel the comfort of your presence and in the midst of our storms, let us hear again these words “peace, be still.”
Sermon preached by Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Okami at the Catholic Church of the Presentation, GRA, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria on Thursday July 19, 2018