Homily: Feast of Kateri Tekakwitha
Feast of Kateri Tekakwitha (Mt. 11:28-30) “Do I Team with Jesus?”
Before there were leather harnesses there were yokes that were used to attach draft animals to various farm implements. Oxen were usually the preferred livestock that would pull wagons or plows. What should be remembered is that animals were paired, they were a team.
I remember my uncle telling me a story about my grandfather. He was a farmer. He had worked with many different teams of horses. He had to train the animals to work together. You would not usually just throw two horses together, but they had another animal that they were comfortable with that they usually worked with.
The teams of horses had to be trained. Neighbors would bring difficult teams of horses and let my grandfather work with them. I will not describe some of the methods he used, but I will say he had a way of getting a horse’s attention.
Jesus says take my yoke upon your shoulders. If we take a yoke upon our shoulders that would imply that we need to be joined to someone else as we meet the challenges of life. We can try to work out our own problems. We can try to pull the load ourselves, but we are probably going to be worn down by the effort.
A Christian is paired with Jesus. He can help us move the burdens of our life. The question is how are we getting along with the Lord? Jesus is not usually fighting us. We are usually the ones who are ignoring or pushing Jesus away if we are in a spiritual crisis.
In a team of horses there is usually one horse, I would imagine is the lead horse, the dominant one. The other horse must follow. It would be like dancing. One partner leads, the other moves with the lead dancer. Our constant challenge is to let Jesus take the lead. When we move with him our burdens will be light.
Reflection Questions:
Do I ask for Jesus’ help when I have a difficult task? Why am reluctant?
Has Jesus pulled me though difficulties? When and how?
Dear Parishioners,
We announced a few months ago, that we would be launching our new WEB page. It looks like we are going to do that within the next few days. It took quite awhile since we have so much material on our page. The company we have designing our page, has shared that we had more content on our page than most churches. Part of it has to do with how many things we post every day. This results in a lot of traffic on our page which is good news.
One thing that we still do is that we livestream two Masses a week. A lot of parishes stopped doing that. Another item we have on our site is the daily posts. This keeps a line of communication open to our parish. I hope our efforts are appreciated. Enjoy the new WEB page.
May Our Lady of Peace pray for us.
Fr. Mark