In This Sunday's Gospel we have, once again; an invitation: "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28) Jesus tells us that His yoke is easy, and His burden light - and again He promises us rest.
One might wonder about this when they consider that every Apostle experienced great difficulties and eventually each one was martyred (with the exception of John.) In my minds eye I can see Peter sitting in prison, shaking his head and saying to himself "There was no mention of THIS in the brochure...." It would be easy to say "well, Jesus means 'rest' in heaven, in eternity." And certainly He does in the ultimate sense mean for us to be with Him in heaven.
But then I look at those here on Earth who do not know Christ. Those who are of this world in every way. Among those, I look at the wealthy of whom it is often said that they "Don't have a care in the world." And I wonder how are we any different from them? If I look carefully, I can see that they do have cares - they're not always very happy people as one might expect - and some, I dare say are not very nice. Many of them have lots of serious problems. When things go wrong - and they do go wrong in this "valley of tears" - many lose hope and do not know where to turn.
So how can one make sense of any of this? The answer, I think lies within our relationship with God. We are his children; and in the same way that in the course of growing up every child must go through certain things which are not very pleasant, there are many things that we - His children - have to go through in the course of our spiritual growth. But we have an intimate relationship with a loving Father that is very present to us and will see us through it all. We have someone to turn to; and there is a real comfort in that. A certain amount of rest in the midst of the trials of life, as we look forward to our exodus to the Promised Land.
+ Theophilus
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