 Come to me All you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest Maybe some of the most consoling words in the whole Bible Words that actually speak to the deepest desires of our hearts a bomb for our restless hearts Words that remind us about eternity Heaven that place of eternal communion Eternal rest Not the rest of boredom or the rest of death But the rest that comes when troubles are gone and when love Takes over everything else Perhaps the Lord Words are even more Pertinent to us today Because if there's one thing that our culture could be accused of I Think it would be the heresy of activism That is this idea that the most important things I do are the things I do and That I need to do important things in order to be good or to be important I think it was Corey Tin Boom who said If the devil can't make you sin He'll make you busy busyness is a virtue in our society and It's because we put a primacy of doing over being It's not Jesus his way. I Remember once hearing Father Dave Pavanka say That there will be many people in purgatory For doing more than what God asked them to do I'm afraid of that actually Jesus is more concerned about relationship Than doing Jesus is never in a hurry. You never see it. The irony is that much of our busyness our activism Is actually rooted in the vice we call sloth It's ironic because we think of sloth as laziness But in the spiritual tradition, that's not what sloth is it's it's what the fathers the desert fathers used to call Achadia or Asadia. I never know how to say it Achadia I say spiritual sloth Which today shows itself in overactivity You see I'm not able to rest Because if I were going to rest I'd have to deal with my restless heart If I were to actually enter into silence Then difficult and painful things would come up in my heart and I don't want to deal with those things And so it's better just to keep myself busy And this is of course one of the great ways the enemy works on our world today We live in the most the least silent culture in the history of the world It's possible for the first time in history to have noise going from the moment I get up until the moment I get to bed Which is exactly what the enemy wants Because if we have silence We might notice that restlessness inside of us and Then we might actually turn to God and this is why we find it hard to be silent We hide it hard to be silent Because we haven't dealt with the things in our hearts That are between us and God That don't allow us to rest and this is why to be a Christian You have to be a person of prayer a Christian imitates Jesus and We know that Jesus spent many hours in Silent prayer. What was he doing there? He was resting resting in the father Of course, this is especially important for those of us who would work in the church or serve in the mission field of the church We must have that daily consistent Silent prayer with him St. Thomas Aquinas when he defines achadia That spiritual sloth he calls it sadness about a spiritual good Now that's a strange thing Why would be sad about a spiritual good? Because you see I have this difficult thing in my life This thing that God has allowed This particular mission that's difficult for me this particular pain or or struggle in a relationship This particular struggle with my own weakness. I have this difficulty in And God's allowed it. It's it's my cross But I don't want to face it. I don't want to surrender to God in it and So I'm sad about it And it makes it very difficult for me to pray or be quiet because if I were to pray or be quiet I'd have to deal with it I'd like to share with you one practical tool that I learned to deal with these things in my own life And I learned it from the Institute for precy formation It's a group dedicated to the spiritual formation of seminarians and priests and bishops out of Omaha, Nebraska And it's what I call four practical steps to surrender See it's really surrender that is the heart of the Christian life This surrender of my life to him my labors and burdens So I can rest come to me you who are labor and heavy burden And I will give you rest if you surrender these things to me. How do I do that? Four practical steps. It's four words acknowledge relate receive and respond Acknowledge relate receive and respond. Let me just Tell you a little bit about each of them first to acknowledge the first thing I have to do whenever I'm having some struggle Something that's making me lose my peace in my heart is I have to acknowledge it I have to admit that it's a struggle and this is hard for us because Sometimes we think if I admit it it has too much power and I won't find a solution Or I think it's not a big deal and I shouldn't worry about it And so I tend rather than acknowledge it to distract myself You know it is you get home at the end of the day and you've had a difficult encounter And you don't want to bring it to the Lord You don't want to acknowledge it so you just turn on the TV or the internet or you distract yourself What I have to do in order to be able to surrender is I have to acknowledge the problem admit that it's a problem The second thing I have to do is relate it to the Lord That means I have to take this problem and Bring it right here in between me and the Lord and I have to begin to talk to the Lord about it I Have to tell the Lord what I feel Lord. This is really hard for me Lord, I don't want this in my life Lord, I'm finding this very difficult and I relate to the Lord in Order to try to see it the way the Lord sees it It's an exercise of faith So I also say Lord Show me why you're allowing this Lord show me what you're doing in it Lord show me where you are in this how you're with me in it, and if I relate to the Lord with faith I Will always come to the third step receive Relating is what I do Receiving is what God does God allows And this will always happen if we're faithful in prayer God will show up God will show me. He's with me God will allow me to see the situation differently God will show me how he's bringing about my own conversion He'll show me how this is using this for good the word of God is so clear about this Remember where St. Paul says we know That God makes all things work for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose Really All things the sins of priests and bishops The terrible destruction that we've seen in our church, right? The terrible Disaffiliation problem that we have amongst our young people my sins your sins God says He makes all things work for good and people of prayer Who are able to bring these things to the Lord? Can receive from him The ability to see how he makes this work for good and this leads to the last step which is respond When I have received from him how to see the situation I Can respond to it differently The best example of this surrender that I have seen is Our Lord in the agony in the garden isn't it stunning that when the Lord comes To this the moment of his passion. He doesn't say father I'm ready I've got this He doesn't say father. I know I was born for this and this is why you brought me here And so I know you'll be with me. I've got this No, what does the Lord say father if it be your will let this cup pass for me Here you see the humanity of the Lord His human nature Perhaps more clearly than anyone out or anywhere else You see the Lord being one divine person has two natures And you can see his human nature Surrendering to his divine nature as he acknowledges the real pain of what he's about to do and He relates that to the father But then do you ever notice what happens next? When they come to arrest Jesus in the agony the garden. He's sweating blood. He's crying. He's asking for help When they come to arrest him He has perfect peace of soul. He's resting in the father There's no more restlessness in his heart because he has surrendered and He can walk through his passion With perfect peace of soul my brothers and sisters all of us struggle in our prayer life We all struggle to become people of prayer, but if we don't become people of prayer Who are able to bring our concrete struggles to him in prayer and surrender them We'll never experience this rest That he has for us and this rest Where we have surrendered to him our greatest struggles and trials and We're able to respond in his love. This is the source of the spiritual fruitfulness of our work So much more important than keeping busy