A king lays down his weapons, an invitation goes out to the exhausted — and then comes a sentence that takes nothing away. On encouragement that asks something of you, help that carries, and a line that does not invite.
Venice, Santa Maria della Salute, November 2023
This Sunday's readings begin with an entry. The prophet Zechariah announces to Jerusalem its king: humble, riding on a donkey. And before he reigns, he disarms: chariots, horses, the war bow — all of it destroyed. A king who takes up his rule by laying down its instruments. A provocation, and not only back then: kings, as a rule, arrive differently.
It is the first of four readings heard this Sunday in every Catholic Mass. The lectionary lays them before us, week after week, without asking whether they suit us. We read them here not as articles of faith and not as riddles, but as an old testimony to how people have negotiated their life together. We listen for what comes across.
The congregation's psalm (Psalm 145) goes along — and edges away from the throne: The Lord lifts up all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. The response to the king ends up with those who can't go on. The Gospel (Matthew 11) seems to complete the picture: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened. A ruler without weapons, an invitation to the exhausted — one could leave it at that. Leadership that invites instead of driving. A friendly Sunday.
Then comes the next sentence. The obvious thing would be: I will take your burden from you. Instead: Take my yoke upon you. The exhausted are not offered a chance to throw something off; they are offered a yoke — an easy one, a light one, but still the device used to harness draft animals. And no one can lay it on me; I have to take it up myself, or it would be the other yoke again, the imposed one. The rest that is promised exists only under it. The bond begins only when I take hold — but then it holds.
Heard with life together in mind, this is a precise description of encouragement. We like to take encouragement for the gentlest thing there is: kind words, tailwind, goodwill with no strings attached.
A project lead has run herself into a dead end; the project has stalled, and so has she. Tailwind is not what she needs. Her boss can now say one of two things. "I'll take it over" — that lifts the burden from her, and sometimes that is exactly right; someone truly at the end of their strength is helped by another carrying. Only, with the burden it also takes away the task, and with the task a measure of the confidence placed in her.
The other sentence takes nothing away: "We'll restructure, but it stays yours." It is the kinder and the harder one at once. It asks of her that she can carry it — and that she must carry it herself. And it works only if she accepts it. If her boss simply leaves the project lying on her desk, that is mere offloading: the imposed yoke, just politer.
Taking over or asking to carry: both are help. One carries, the other credits. Encouragement is the second — which is why it asks something of you and relieves you of nothing.
The invitation softens the tone of the claim, not its bond. And it has an address: those who labor and are burdened. What is asked of everyone is asked of no one. Whoever still carries themselves is not meant — they don't need it. Not yet. Exhaustion comes to most of us.
The second reading, from the Letter to the Romans, remains unwieldy. Paul divides: some live according to the flesh, others according to the Spirit; the ones die, the others live. Flesh, for him, does not mean the body — a few verses on, it is the Spirit that gives life to mortal bodies. What is meant is what one lives from: from oneself alone, from one's own store, or from what one is given. But the clarification changes nothing about the form. The line is fixed before anyone takes up a yoke. It does not invite; it assigns.
So the lectionary has laid both before us this Sunday. A yoke that binds only once I take hold — that can be asked of me. And a division that holds whether I take hold or not — that can only be set before me. Week after week, everything the readings bring is laid before us. But asked of me is only what leaves the accepting to me. The letter leaves it no room. What I am to make of that, I do not yet know — not this Sunday.
Here are the texts of July, 5th