Sunday Gospel Reflection, October 4, 2026: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened...

Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened…
How do we come before the Lord? 

    In the case of St. Francis of Assisi, the Patron of San Francisco whose solemnity we celebrate this weekend, the answer was straightforward. Unlike Israel, whom God has put on trial for their infidelity in the Book of the Prophet Micah, Francis knew that he should come before the Lord, and bow before God most high with humility and virtue. As Micah tells the people: You have been told, O mortal, what the Lord requires of you: only to do justice and to love goodness and to walk humbly with your God. Francis let go of all he possessed in order to walk humbly with God, in order to understand all that God was calling him to. 

    St. Francis was able to, in the words of Psalm 16, say to the Lord, my Lord are you; you are my only good. The psalmist celebrates the fact that God and his rule over mankind are more important than any other inheritance. God counsels him, leads him, and cares for him; even in the night the psalmist’s heart exhorts him, urging him forward, toward God, that God might show him the path to life, abounding joy in God’s presence. Francis of Assisi found his joy in the Lord, as, on our best days, do we. 

    Yet St. Francis was not without suffering. Like Paul, whose scars spoke to the Galatians of his participation in Jesus’ suffering, Francis bore the marks of Jesus on his body in the form of the stigmata. Such marks proclaimed that Francis found his identity in Christ: the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world, as Paul writes. In the cross, Francis found salvation. 

   In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus speaks to those who have accepted his revelation of God’s love in the world: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Unlike the yoke of the law that burdens the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus’ yoke allows Jesus to bear the weight of our struggles with us, walking beside us, guiding us along right paths. The Son of God, meek and humble of heart, was Francis’ invitation to become the vehicle by which God’s message would be transmitted to the world. Unlike the wise and learned who rejected Jesus, Francis saw himself as a humble instrument of God, obedient not out of fear but out of choice, full of faith in the Savior who died for him, and ready to live the message of Jesus’ love for the world with the whole of his being. 

    We come before Jesus laboring and heavily burdened, but, like our patron St. Francis of Assisi, we come with open hearts, ready to receive the revelation as ones to whom the Son wishes to reveal the Father. May we do so in humble obedience, accepting the Lord’s peace and mercy as we follow his rule, conforming our life to Christ’s. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture Class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com