When Suffering is Too Great
Have you ever suffered so much that you cannot bear it?
All over our world there are people who feel this way. Health challenges, tragedies, relationship breakdowns, violence, war all have a way of taking a toll on us that can be debilitating.
In these moments let us recall the Words of Our Saviour:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28
If you are reading this and are not suffering, how privileged are you? I invite you to do the most charitable deed and commit to praying every day for those who are suffering and know that God will smile on you. In this time thank God for your health and blessings and ask for the courage to do His Holy Will.
Jesus says, “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.” Matthew 11:29-30
Jesus longs for the love of His people but He does not constrain us to love Him or obey Him. However, Jesus will assist us in accomplishing what might otherwise seem impossible!
The Yoke of Jesus Christ is His LOVE enabling us to be ONE with Him, serving as He desires.
There is no other way to unite a person to Jesus except through an outpouring of God’s divine love. We cannot accomplish this communion on our own. We must humbly be open to it.
When we take the yoke of Jesus upon us, God unites us to Himself through an outpouring of His Love, enabling us to be ONE with Him in a communion of Holiness dedicated to God’s service.
Jesus uses an expression that people in His day would have been familiar with. The people knew the ‘yoke’ as a wood harness that would unite two animals to enable them to work together, alleviating the heavy burden.
The yoke of Jesus Christ is not a physical bondage. It is a spiritual communion enabling God to work through us via our consent to His Holy Will.
It is His love, His Holy Spirit, poured into our hearts uniting our hearts to His Divine Heart enabling us to understand and do His Holy Will. All we need to do is to consent to becoming ONE with Him in a single-minded pursuit of divine will and service. This requires surrender and trust on our part. We receive God’s love and trust in the power of His love to direct our lives one step at a time as we walk together as One. Divine love is the key ingredient enabling us to become more like Jesus, committed to doing His Holy Will, living in persistent service of God’s plan.
WHAT JESUS WANTS
Jesus longs for a relationship with us that is INTIMATE and PERSISTENT.
Jesus is ready and able to do the ‘heavy lifting’ to help us to fulfill His divine plans.
We must enter into this divine relationship through the door of REPENTANCE.
We must offer our humble Saviour our hearts humbled with sorrow for our sins, recognizing that without Him we can do nothing.
“My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.” Psalm 51:17
Jesus will forgive us, cleansing our souls through His Holy Blood, purifying our hearts and our lives and helping us to discover our TRUE IDENTITY as Children of God and Disciples of Jesus.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9
As we receive the tender, merciful love of Jesus we enter into a communion where we are forever united with Our Lord and Saviour. Jesus is a ‘servant leader’ who at the Last Supper washed His apostles feet to show us we are to love and serve one another.
The ‘yoke’ of love that unites our hearts together with the infinite love of Jesus enables us to discern the Holy Will of God and to do it.
Jesus teaches us this mystery:
The human heart united to the heart of Jesus Christ is fulfilled only as we surrender to being loved by Jesus and to loving Jesus in return through all those that enter our lives.
“We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19
Just as Jesus is always united to the Father and to the Holy Spirit, we are called to live perpetually connected to Our Saviour Jesus Christ who draws us into a communion with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Discovering the True Meaning of Family
I recall one Christmas Eve going to a nursing home to try to bring some joy to some residents suffering from dementia. I remember one woman in particular kept hugging me and calling me ‘mother’. As I think back on this day I realize that it was there that I lived the ‘true meaning’ of Christmas. We were not connected by ‘blood lines’ but that afternoon we became ‘family’, a family defined by love. We spent some sacred time together that Christmas eve loving one another as we shared food, music, song, laughter, hugs and kisses in the Spirit of Our Beloved Saviour, Jesus Christ.
‘The yoke’, or the ‘divine connection’, between God and Man is enabled by Jesus through the power of His Sacred Blood and His Holy Spirit. His Holy Blood washes away our sins, redeeming us and His Holy Spirit is the all-powerful force of love that enables us to love. That’s why Jesus says His yoke is easy. His yoke is love and loving is made easy by the power of God’s love in our hearts. The ‘burden’ is light because love does not burden the conscience. Sin burdens the human conscience but Jesus takes away this burden by forgiving us through the power of His Sacred Blood.
No one loves without the Holy Spirit of God within them! We must be connected to Jesus, in an divine communion with the Holy One who teaches us and enables us to love!
“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”1 John 4:16
Jesus makes loving easy so long as we choose to remain connected to Him in a state of grace where we strive to discern and do His Holy Will. God’s love conceives in us, slowly but surely, the holy character of Jesus Christ silencing our selfishness and giving birth to selflessness.
Jesus continues to wait patiently for the love He so desires. Jesus is longing to unite souls to Himself in a ‘spiritual communion’ that begins with our declaration of faith and trust. Jesus offers Himself to us in an unconditional, infinite expression of love and forgiveness. All we have to do is repent and humble ourselves to acknowledge that without Jesus we cannot succeed!
Fidelity and obedience to Jesus are the products of faith and zeal. United to Jesus in the strength of His Love requires a total surrender to His Holy Will and His Holy Way.
You may be thinking: This sounds impossible!
Remember it is Jesus that makes ‘loving easy’ and ‘the burden of God’s love is light’.
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.” Mark 10:27 There are people in our world who need miracles. God makes miracles! Holy and Merciful God change this world with the miracle of Your Infinite Love. Please bring healing and new beginnings for Your Glory Jesus!
We cannot summon from our own human strength the power to love as God wills us to love. This power is given to us through our connection with Jesus Christ. It is Jesus that knows how to do what we can only imagine.
Jesus continues to enter the world through the power of the Holy Spirit and the consent of men and women that believe in Him. He continues to be born spiritually in the hearts of those that will trust in Him and surrender their lives for His glory. He continues to give us His Body and Blood through the Sacrament of the Eucharist and He continues to wait patiently for the intimacy and tenderness He so desires.
Jesus calls us to learn from Him and I personally believe there is no better place to learn from Jesus than at the foot of His Cross.
“He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” Isaiah 53:3
“But many were amazed when they saw him. His face was so disfigured he seemed hardly human, and from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man.” Isaiah 52:14
This is what I truly believe:
When people come face-to-face with their Crucified Saviour Jesus Christ they cannot remain the same!
The love of Our Crucified Saviour can transform the coldest and cruelest hearts!
Jesus has paid the price for your soul! He was brutally tortured and killed so He can spend forever with you.
All you have to do is say:
Jesus I need You! Help me! Forgive me! Save me!
And Jesus will love you, help you, forgive and save you!
With faith comes responsibility. We cannot say we believe in Jesus and ignore the fact that so many souls have yet to be saved.
Please commit to being a peacemaker, praying for the reconciliation of souls to God.
Join A Peaceful Revolution in the Name of Jesus Christ that is uniting Christians daily at the Foot of the Cross of Jesus, in prayer and remembrance of the Passion of Christ. We stop at 3pm (in our local time zones). Three o’clock is the Time Jesus died for us. If you cannot stop at this time then pick another time zone that works for you, but don’t let a day go by without remembering the Passion of Jesus Christ and praying for the salvation of souls.
Jesus You are my Heart’s Desire, my Beloved Lord and Saviour! I love You above all things and above all people and I love You within all things and within all people.