Please read the Scripture passage before the homily.
If you introduce me to your Dad and Mom, I will understand you better. If you introduce your son or daughter, I will know you better. We learn from our parents, and we teach our children. Jesus tells us that also happens in God’s family: we only know the Father through the Son and we only know he Son from the Father.
God is a God of relationships. God does not exist in a vacuum. God is not a tyrant or an autocrat. God is Father, God is Son and God is Holy Spirit. God is one, but God has three relationships that are so perfect that each relationship is a person, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Jesus tells us to take his joke upon us and to learn from him. His joke is to have a perfect relationship with his Father and to share that perfect relationship with us. Loving the Father and being in relationship with him is not a burden but a blessing. If we take upon ourselves Jesus’ burden of relating to the Father, we will find it easy and light.
Jesus took our burden upon himself. He wanted so to relate to us that he took upon himself our human nature, our relationships. He carried upon himself the burden of our humanity so that we could take upon ourselves the yoke of his divinity. Our burden was heavy because of our selfishness; his burden is light because God’s nature is always self-giving.
Jesus’ Father shows ease in sharing the Son with us. Jesus is at ease in sharing the Father with us. Jesus has traded places with us so that he could know how to be human and that we could know how to be like God. This was the task Jesus had in taking on our human flesh: he had to switch places with us. This is our task, to switch places with Jesus.
Jesus puts it this way in our Gospel package, “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me and you will find rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”