Come to Me and Rest

All week I’ve been thinking about the beautiful homily I heard this past Sunday, focused on the Gospel message: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
 and I will give you rest.” After a lovely but tiring weekend, I was at my town’s cathedral on my own for evening Mass. I generally attend my local parish’s morning family celebration, which I love – it’s a vibrant, caring community which still operates on that old school vibe of a parish being the hub of a neighborhood. The cathedral is the exact opposite kind of place – vast, cool, hollow and not necessarily that connected as a community. Which sometimes is exactly what I need – quiet time, where you can feel empty and alone, perhaps even sad, and allow God to fill up that space.

The priest (whom I love, he makes going to the cathedral worthwhile) started by asking what people’s reasons were for being at that exact Mass on that Sunday. I knew I was going to get this one wrong – I was there more out of a sense of familial obligation of weekly attendance than personal desire, in the evening because I was exhausted and just needed some time alone. “Are any of you here for quiet time alone with the Lord?” Um, yes. Maybe not in the perfect sense of coming to God, but that is mostly what I was seeking. He talked about how one of the main things Jesus asks us to do is to come rest with him – and that while attending weekly Mass is perhaps not a key value amongst many modern Catholics, that this was the reason and the benefit – time at rest with the Lord. This is seriously easy! For all the parts of Catholicism that I often find enormously difficult – questions about faith, about Church teachings and practices, about the seriously hard road full of sacrifices that the Lord asks of us – this is definitely something I can not only manage, but need – that time when you can turn off the incessant background chatter of your own mind, and just be. I can’t pretend that I always find deep revelation, or even as much connection with the Lord as I may desire, at Mass – sometimes it really is just going through the motions. But I love this thought of God asking us to carve out time just to be looked after by Him – to give over our burdens, whatever they may be, and be at rest.