Readings: Exodus 22.20-26 ; Psalm 18; 1 Thessalonians 1.5c-10; Matthew 22.34-40
Today's second reading contains what seems at first to be one of the strongest paradoxes in Paul's letters. He compliments the Thessalonians for 'receiving the word in great affliction, with joy from the Holy Spirit'. Other translations have them 'welcoming the word in great hardship with the joy of the Holy Spirit' and 'in spite of persecution (receiving) the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit'.
We can understand affliction, hardship and persecution, and we can understand joy: the challenge is to understand this particular joy from the Holy Spirit, which is compatible with affliction, hardship and persecution. It is a joy which seems to exist in parallel to those things while not being at all touched by them. How can it be so, afflicted and joyful in the same moment?
In Galatians 5.22 Paul tells us that joy is the fruit of the Holy Spirit that follows immediately on love and the second reading today comes just after he has commended the Thessalonians for their work of faith, labour of love and steadfastness of hope (1 Thessalonians 1.3). We are faced with similar paradoxes: faith involves work, love involves labour, and hope requires steadfastness. Jesus spoke of an easy yoke and a light burden, the onerous task of being a disciple which is not onerous at all even though it is! He's not heavy, he's my brother. Just as it transforms obligation, love also transforms difficulty, for the joy which accompanies love is not affected at all by any difficulty. In fact we are tempted to say that this joy is deepened by affliction for it is thereby assured of the truth of its love. The labour and work and steadfastness which accompany the joyful building of the kingdom of God assure us that we are indeed walking in love.
For everything is brought back to love as we see in today's gospel reading. The yoke of the law - its burden, obligation, weight - is summed up in the great commandment, to love God with all one's heart, soul and mind (in labour, work and steadfastness therefore) and to love our neighbour as ourselves. Our eyes will not then be in the first place on the affliction, hardship or persecution that accompany our discipleship. We will not think first of the weight, burden or obligation of the yoke Jesus lays on us. He's not heavy, he's my brother. My love for my brother does not remove the physical weight of carrying him but it enables me to carry him, it gives me the strength for it. Love even makes me want to carry him, and to be joyful in the onerous task as it becomes, mysteriously, light.
Jesus teaches us this so that his joy in carrying us may be in us also, and our joy be complete, no matter what the burdens our love asks us to carry.
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