The kind of yoke that Jesus has in mind with this teaching would be a wooden yoke that hangs over the necks of two oxen (or horses) for the purpose of pulling something like a plow, cart, or wagon. The yoke focuses the attention and strength of the two animals into one, lightening the burden on each animal, making the work easier. This yoke teaches the animals to work together and to support one another.  

From this idea, Jesus’ yoke gives us focus, and turns us toward the same direction as Jesus, to be united in accomplishing his work. The work becomes easier and lighter as we are doing God’s will -- we are working with the same purpose as Jesus Christ. It is not “my will be done…” but “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”   

We can place other kinds of yokes on others, and some have been placed on us—burdensome, judgmental, and controlling ones. What criticisms, complaints, anger, resentments, prejudices, racism, or sexism do I carry within me that burden my heart and restrict my freedom to love and embrace others? What interior and outward work must I do to remove these yokes from myself and from others, so that together we may take up Christ’s yoke, which is easier and lighter?

—Fr. Glen Chun, SJ, a priest of the Midwest Province, is community minister of Bellarmine House of Studies in St. Louis.

Oh Lord, my God!

I have tried to take up your yoke alongside with you, and like Simeon, to share with you in carrying the cross of salvation.  

But the cart behind me is attached to the yoke of my human ways, and full of stuff, that limits my ability to follow you: goods of the world, but way too many; detritus of my hurts and pains from growing up, and judgement and criticism from others that I continue to hang onto. Most hurtful are those that keep adding to the pile: my own judgements, cruelties, and injustices that I store in me to be heaped onto my sisters and brothers.  

Oh Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.

—Fr. Glen Chun, SJ