Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Come to me all you who are labored and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Mt. 11:28
Early in the 1960’s, during my college years, a singing group called The Kingston Trio became what one critic called “the most envied, imitated, and successful singing group in all of show business.” They were a major part of what was then known as “folk music” – that kind of sing-along music where everyone grabbed a guitar, and hootenannies became all the rage!
And then the Beatles came along and nothing has been quite the same since!
But I mention The Kingston Trio because one of their biggest hits was a song that began with the Trio repeating this same line: “It takes a worried man to sing a worried song.” (Feel free to sing along!)
It then ended with this phrase: “I’m worried now, but I won’t be worried long.”
Today’s gospel reading reminds me of this song.
Because the words to “The Worried Man” so closely resemble what Jesus is saying about how terribly burdened and anxious we all are, and how passionately Jesus desires to give us rest – or, in the words of the song, how much Jesus wants to assure us that he can show us a way in which “we won’t be worried long.”
Worry. Anxiety.
We live in a world of so many available choices – seemingly endless ones. So many that it could easily be said that no other people since the beginning of time have had so many choices available to them.
Worry, then, is that state of mind in which a certain kind of paralysis is created within us, a terrible deep-down-in-the-gut feeling that “I’m scared to death I won’t make the right choice, and then what will I do?”
We Americans are terribly anxious, worried people.
We’re worried about our jobs; worried about our children; worried about our marriages; worried about our finances; worried about our health; worried about our weight; worried about getting all the “stuff” we want to enjoy; worried about our sports teams; worried about … just about everything.
We do so much worrying, so much fretting, that we’re often not even able to rest properly says the National Sleep Foundation. Based on several national studies, they claim that, on any given night, more than forty million Americans do not get adequate sleep.
Why? Why can’t we sleep?
Why are we so worried, so anxious?
After all, we’re the most affluent people ever. We have more goods, more available food, more access to transportation, more comforts of all kinds than anyone ever before in all human history.
And yet, we not only can’t sleep, we’re more and more dependent on mood altering chemicals to calm us and, in way too many cases, addict us. Heroin is on an astonishing rise. Anxiety has become the number one mental health problem in America.
This is where the words of Jesus in today’s gospel can make a significant difference by introducing us to a wholly different lifestyle, a different way of being in the world.
“Come to me all you who are labored and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
That invitation is addressed to all of us. It involves at least four things:
First, re-establish our priorities.
To do that, we need to ask our ourselves a series of questions:
What master am I serving? What values am I embracing? What attitudes are driving the bus of my life?
Are they ones that Jesus embraces throughout the gospels, the ones about reconciliation, about the making of peace, about being merciful and pure of heart and humble? Or are they the ones that promote greed and ambition and violence and hatred and meanness?
Second, make certain that the following top your priorities list: family time, sharing joy with friends, finding moments of silence in your day, calling “time out on the field” when you find yourself being overwhelmed, going into a “huddle” so that you re-orient yourself to what truly counts.
Third, set aside time each day just to listen. Listen to the people who are dear to you. Listen to God speaking to you through the beauties of Sacred Scripture, music, art, literature, and nature.
Fourth, make the community of those who share your values and your dreams the most important people in your life. These people are the ones who make up your “church” family. And then celebrate with them the ultimate family meal, the Eucharist.
These famous words of St. Francis of Assisi may also help to assure you to “not be worried long:”
“Keep a clear eye toward life’s end. Do not forget your purpose and destiny as God’s Creature.
What you are in His sight is what you are and nothing more.
Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take nothing you have received … only what you have given: a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage.”
Jesus offers a way of living that will no longer be a worried one. Instead, it will be one filled with the rest and the peace that Jesus promises when he says:
“Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
11809194.1
7/7/2017
