What is the yoke of the Son of God?

It has been an action-packed, deadline-filled day here at Camp Carl, located in an exclusive, swank, and secluded suburb in Eugene, Oregon, just minutes away from the inclusive, loud, and non-secluded Costco and other assorted stores. I had hoped to post twenty or thirty items so far (I say that in case my boss is reading), but time has flown by while researching for my next bestseller, A Biography of O. Who knew that writing the story of the fifteenth letter in the alphabet could be so demanding? At times I feel as though I am simply writing in circles.

Actually, this morning I wrote my "Opening the Word" column, published in Our Sunday Visitor newspaper, for the readings on Sunday, July 3, 2011. The Gospel (Matt 11:25-30) contains this well-known invitation and exhortation from Jesus:

"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light."

Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, in the second volume of Fire of Mercy, Heart of the World: Meditations on the Gospel According to St. Matthew (Ignatius, 1996; also available in e-book format), his outstanding commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, writes the following about the yoke of Jesus Christ:

"The divine nature was his from the first; ... but he made himself nothing, assuming the nature of a slave. Bearing the human likeness, revealed in human shape, he humbled himself, and in obedience accepted even death—death on a cross" (Phil 2:6-8). Assuming, bearing, humbling, accepting. ... The yoke of the Son is the Incarnation. Out of love for his Father and for us, he put on the yoke of our human nature and all that it entails in its present condition. He who was divine yoked himself to us through his humanity, and now he is inviting us to yoke ourselves to him and his divinity. When the Son's yoke becomes ours as well, his Incarnation becomes our divinization. To become yoked to the divinity and glory of the Son! What greater reason do we need to explain the sublime joy that flows from bearing such a burden? Not only does this yoke, far from imposing servitude, in fact crush our solitude, our tragic singleness and desolation; but it does so by linking us to the community of Divine Persons. Our isolation is not only temporarily assuaged; it is permanently abolished by the invasion into our souls of the very life of the immortal God! By the association with him that Jesus is here proposing, we become yoked forever to the destiny of the incarnate God. (pp. 722-23)

More from the Introduction to the same volume: