Augustine tried to work Christology in where the text says that the father embraced the son (cf. Lk 15:20). “The arm of the Father is the Son,” he writes. He could have appealed here to Irenaeus, who referred to the Son and the Spirit as the two hands of the Father. “The arm of the Father is the Son.” When he lays this arm on our shoulders as “his light yoke,” then that is precisely not a burden he is loading onto us, but rather the gesture of receiving us in love. The “yoke” of this arm is not a burden that we must carry, but a gift of love that carries us and makes us sons.
