The Remedy for a Broken Culture: “Come to Me, I Will Give You Rest”

 “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest…” There has never been a better promise for western culture. A culture of anxiety and depression, a culture of escape and superficiality, a culture that keeps getting tired of going nowhere, a culture that looks for diversion and fun to escape a deep sense of worthlessness. A culture of anxiety: a culture generating people fearful of the unknown, of failure, of being abandoned. A culture of depression: of people depressed when they come to themselves and see only nothingness, people accustomed to boredom, sliding to despair. A culture without God: a culture blind to God’s existence, deaf to His call and suspicious of His promises. And, because of that, I would even say a culture without true love, full of human hearts closed to their neighbour, an atmosphere of selfishness. A culture where a spouse is loved as long as this is beneficial to the lover, where a child is desired as long as it is healthy and does not bring extra burden to the parents, where a parent is discarded or forgotten when no benefit comes from him or her. Some love their neighbour only when “it works” for them, like a car: if it doesn’t work, you discard it or exchange it. If family relationships are in crisis, imagine what happens in the world of labour, or in educational environments. Why is this happening?

“Come to me,” says the Lord. Someone may object that God is still part of our culture. I respond that this is precisely the problem. God does not want to be part of the culture, but its centre. Hockey is part of our culture. Hockey and God are different. Both have a time on Sunday, both have a space in town, but your team and God require different attitudes from you. God wants to be the ultimate reason of your choices, of all of them. He wants to be the highest authority and the best friend for you. If this is not so, our culture may have religion but not a God, and therefore not a true religion. My point is that, because there is no God, there is no true love among human beings, and therefore it is impossible to develop true self-esteem, the sense that we are good and that life is good.

When human relationships are wounded, even in our families, a deep sense of loneliness and abandonment grows in human hearts. When someone does not choose to be with you because of who you are; when you sense that people deal with you because of what they get; you realize that you are not worth their love and feel therefore insecure: “I am not lovable.” Then, you feel the need to earn people’s love, because you are not lovable unless you have this or that, unless you do this or that, unless you succeed here or there… And the race begins. You run for your life. We cannot live without love, and if the only way to get love is doing this or that, life becomes a rush for the fleeting sense of worth that work gives.

But sometimes the sense of worthlessness creeps in, and then the medicine is escaping the pain with fun. Pleasure is chosen many times as a quick distraction from pain, one that leaves the pain in the deep, far from our present awareness but deeply rooted in the heart.

“Come to me,” says the Lord. You feel unloved by people, but I want you to be with me. I do not need anything from you: I want to give you rest. You rush and work to obtain love: no need, I already love you. And because I love you, I want you to work with me: “take my yoke upon you.” Yes, human beings need to work; not, however, in order to obtain their dignity, but in order that their dignity and beauty might be shown. The work you can do is the fruit of my love for you. You can do beautiful things and, most of all, you can love and give yourself to me and to others, because I made you so well.

“Come to me.” “My yoke is easy,” because it fits who you are. I made you and I know what you can do and how. If you work with me, you will work, but your work will be easy. When you depart from me, you depart from my plan, and any work you do will be difficult, because you are not made for that. Come to me. Do not work alone, work with me. Do not make it difficult, take my yoke upon you. Actually, when you carry my yoke with me, you give me rest, you give me joy. Good Friday was sad because they left me alone, but carrying my yoke with you feels like family to me.

“Come to me”: “my burden is light.” It is light because you do not lift it alone. All evils in today’s world come from lack of love. Being unloved, alone and abandoned, is the worst burden a human heart can carry. But love makes light any burden. I do not give work without giving the strength. With my love, you can conquer all things.

“Come to me, all you that are carrying heavy burdens.” The burden of our sins: “My iniquities have overwhelmed me; they are a burden too heavy to bear” (Psalm 38:4). Come to me, says the Lord, my forgiveness is yours through the sacrament of Reconciliation. The burden of self-redemption: “The ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice” (Psalm 49:8). Come to me, says the Lord, your value is the value of my own blood, which I have paid for you. No need of self-redemption, of showing others that you are worth it. You are already a treasure, a treasure that I paid and that I want for me. Come to me, take my yoke upon you, obey me, do not burden yourself with self-made problems.

Someone may say, I am not wearied, why should I change the way I live? Ask yourself if you feel this way because you are having fun and escaping from responsibility. Covering up the pain does not take it away. Maybe you think you are not burdened because people love you. Ask yourself why they love you. Is it because you have what they want, or because you say what they want? If so, are you really loved? And I don’t mean to destroy relationships but to heal them: if you are not truly loved by people, realize that God loves you, that God loves them as well, and love them as God loves you: not because you need something from them, but because you can love and they need love.

May God help us to change this culture for good. This change begins in every heart who decides to truly love. “Come to me,” says the Lord.