The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
A yoke is a wooden bar that animals are attached to that keeps them side by side in order to effectively pull something together. It trains the animals to be steered by the farmer and to walk neither faster, nor slower than its partner, but side by side.
What an image: all of us in Jesus’ yoke, moving together effectively for His Kingdom. That’s the ideal…but of course, our sinfulness and own wills get in the way. The need for control. The need for self-protection. The need to be doing the most work or the one who simply gives up and checks out. We pull and try to break free of Jesus’ yoke and in the process, hurt those beside us and hurt our relationship with the Lord.
The times I have fought the yoke rather than be steered by Jesus are too numerous to count. The most glaring time was in the early years of my marriage.
I had a perception of what married life should look like, different from life before marriage. But a funny thing happened. Things weren’t going as planned.
Instead, my husband and I were living together, but had very separate lives. We were not yoked, letting Jesus steer us. In fact, we were heading in two different directions, creating stress and causing our relationship to break apart.
Neither of us wanted to yield, thinking the other person was the problem.
Praise God for faith.
Today, Jesus praises God for what He has revealed to “these little ones.” I praise God for the moments where I yielded to Jesus’ yoke and said: Your way is better, Lord. I know it is not by my own power that I respond that way.
When my husband and I faced that things were broken, it became apparent that we had never accepted Jesus’ yoke. Instead, we told God we were committed to doing marriage with Him, and then set the yoke aside, thinking we had it under control.
When the Lord met us at our breaking point, He revealed to us how we had left Him and His yoke behind. When we took His yoke upon us, our marriage transformed. We still face problems, but with Him steering us, there is a way through. He won’t steer us into destruction. He steers us into everlasting life.
Nicole Berlucchi is a writer and an independent contractor for Catholic nonprofits. She has been married to Joe since 2006, and they live in Nashville with their four children. Passionate about listening to Jesus and Mary’s motherhood, she wrote the book Magnify Love: Unlocking the Heart of Jesus in Your Marriage and Your Life and has two Substacks: Go Tell the World About Mary and More Love, More Life, More Glory to God.
