Why the Yoke Feels Heavy to Us

But if to us, on the contrary, the yoke of Christ seems neither light nor easy, that must rightly be put down to our own perversity. We are cast down by unbelief and lack of faith, and we fight with foolish stubbornness against the command, or rather the advice, of him who says, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell (or get rid of) all that you have, and come, follow me.” For we keep the substance of our worldly goods. And since the devil holds our soul fast in the snares of these things, what is left but this? When he wants to cut us off from spiritual delights, he troubles us by reducing these goods and taking them from us. With his crafty tricks he contrives that, once the sweetness of Christ’s yoke and the lightness of his burden have become hard for us to bear through the evil of a corrupt desire, and once we are caught in the chains of the very property and substance we kept for our comfort and consolation, he may always torment us with the whips of worldly cares, wringing out of our own selves the very means by which we are tortured. For “each one is bound by the cords of his own sins,” and hears from the prophet: “Look, all you who kindle a fire, surrounded by flames: walk in the light of your fire, and in the flames that you have kindled.” For, as Solomon bears witness, “By the very thing by which a man sins, by that he will be punished.” [a]

The very pleasures we enjoy become a torment to us, and the delights and enjoyments of this flesh turn on their author like executioners. For a man who is propped up by his former wealth and property is sure not to accept perfect humility of heart, nor the complete putting to death of dangerous pleasures. But where all these tools of goodness lend their help, all the trials of this present life, and whatever losses the enemy can contrive, are borne not only with the greatest patience but with real pleasure. And again, where they are lacking, so dangerous a pride springs up that we are wounded by the deadly blows of impatience at the slightest reproach, and the prophet Jeremiah may say to us: “And now what have you to do on the road to Egypt, to drink the muddy water? And what have you to do on the road of the Assyrians, to drink the water of the river? Your own wickedness will correct you, and your apostasy will rebuke you. Know and see that it is an evil and a bitter thing for you to have left the Lord your God, and that my fear is not with you, says the Lord.”

How is it, then, that the wonderful sweetness of the Lord’s yoke is felt to be bitter, unless the bitterness of our own dislike spoils it? How does the exceeding lightness of the divine burden become heavy, unless in our stubborn presumption we despise the one by whom it was carried? Scripture itself plainly bears witness to this very thing when it says, “For if they would walk in right paths, they would surely have found the paths of righteousness smooth.” It is plain, I say, that it is we who make the right and smooth paths of the Lord rough with the nasty, hard stones of our desires. Most foolishly we forsake the royal road, paved with the flints of apostles and prophets and trodden down by the footsteps of all the saints and of the Lord himself, and we look for trackless and thorny places. Blinded by the lures of present pleasures, we tear our way through dark paths overgrown with the briars of sins, our legs torn and our wedding garment ripped, so that we are not only pierced by the sharp thorns of the brambles but actually laid low by the bites of the deadly snakes and scorpions lurking there. For “there are thorns and thistles in wrong ways, but he who fears the Lord will keep himself from them.” Of such people the Lord also says elsewhere through the prophet: “My people have forgotten, sacrificing in vain, and stumbling in their ways, in the ancient paths, to walk in them on a road not trodden.” For, as Solomon says, “The ways of those who do not work are strewn with thorns, but the ways of the vigorous are well trodden.” And so, wandering from the king’s highway, they can never arrive at that capital city toward which our course should always be directed without turning aside. Ecclesiastes has expressed this too, quite tellingly, when he says, “The labor of fools wearies those who do not know how to go to the city”: that is, to “the heavenly Jerusalem, which is the mother of us all.”

But whoever truly gives up this world, takes Christ’s yoke upon himself, learns from him, and is trained in the daily practice of suffering wrong (for he is “gentle and humble of heart”), will always remain undisturbed by every temptation, and “all things will work together for his good.” For, as the prophet Obadiah says, the words of God are “good to him who walks uprightly”; and again: “For the ways of the Lord are right, and the righteous will walk in them, but the transgressors will fall in them.”