What does it mean to find rest in Jesus?
Jesus said: “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.”
According to the 1962 Missal of St. John XXIII for the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today is the feast of the Seven Brothers and Sts. Rufina and Secunda. The Roman widow Felicitas and her seven sons were martyred in about the year 162. Pope Gregory the Great said of this widow, “She was more than a martyr, for seeing her seven children martyred before her eyes, she was in some sort a martyr in each of them.” A century later, Rufina and Secunda, daughters of a wealthy Roman, refused to marry two suitors who had apostatized from the Christian religion. They were scourged and beheaded.
The journey of the disciple of Jesus is to go beyond [the limits] to bring this good news. But there is another pathway for the disciple of Jesus: the inner journey, the path within, the path of the disciple who seeks the Lord every day, through prayer, in meditation. If the disciple does not continuously seek God in this way, the Gospel that he takes to others will be weak, watered down – a Gospel with no strength. If a disciple is not journeying to serve, there’s no reason for the journey. If his life is not for service, there is no point in living the Christian life [it: non serve, per vivere, come Cristiano]. But the true disciple is called to service to the other: “service to Jesus in the sick, the imprisoned, the hungry, those with no shirt on their back. Jesus wants this of us because He is to be found in them: “Service to Christ in others.”(Santa Marta, 11 June 2015)