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Commentary on the Gospel – December 10, 2025
When I was a child, I was taught the commandments of God’s law, the commandments of the Church, and many other moral rules—rules in which, it seems inevitably, we were threatened with mortal sin and eternal condemnation if we failed to keep them. And there were many, many, opportunities to commit a mortal sin. One could fall into sin almost without noticing. Because of this, confession became a problem. You had to confess every single sin, in detail. That’s why many people ended their list of sins with the phrase, “and for all the sins I don’t remember and all those from my past life.” It was like a way of making sure you were fulfilling the commandment to confess properly. The conclusion was this: being a Christian, following Jesus, had turned into a heavy yoke—a pile of obligations, norms, laws, and regulations. Always with the threat of eternal condemnation if you failed to keep them all. That was not a relief for people but the opposite: a source of anxiety.
The truth is that all of this had—and still has—little to do with the Gospel. We can read today’s Gospel text peacefully. And just as easily, we can read any of the four Gospels with the same peace. And we will see that what we described in the previous paragraph, and what the Church has been for many people for a long time, has very little to do with Jesus.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Jesus is rest for the oppressed, not a source of oppression. He brings peace and serenity; He is not an unbearable weight that fills hearts with anxiety. His yoke is easy, and His burden is light. He does not threaten eternal condemnation but invites us to follow Him, to unite ourselves with Him in building a better world—more just, more fraternal. Sin is not missing Mass one Sunday; sin is despising your brother or sister. But even for the sinner—and we all belong to that group—the message is one of mercy, hope, of encouraging us to rise again and try once more. In Jesus we do not find condemnation but relief and rest.