NOTES for Mar 12:28-37
‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your understanding, and with all your strength...’ This is what S. S. Averintsev says in his commentary on the Gospel of Mark: ‘These words (Dt 6:4–5) form the most central prayer of the Old Testament faith, which a devout Jew recited several times a day and which he is advised to recite before death, especially before a martyr's death. In Jewish tradition, reciting this prayer is called “accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven”.’ Yet it turns out that in accepting this yoke we have not yet accepted everything. There is another yoke that we must take upon ourselves: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ How strange it must have sounded to people accustomed to thinking that the first was enough, that the first was already a great deal... ‘Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls; for My yoke is good, and My burden is light’ (Mt 11:29–30). A paradox: He says that His burden is light and His yoke is good, yet in fact He adds to the yoke already there another that is perhaps even heavier? How are we to understand this? Perhaps the answer lies in the words about meekness and humility. For humility is something that surpasses everything that is ours, yet it alone enables us to go beyond everything that is ours. Meekness and humility are both the way to God and the way to another person. Humility is not passivity; it is the ability to take on a yoke, to take on a load and not collapse beneath it. To be with God and to be with another person means being able to listen — that is the kind of yoke it is — it means silencing one's whole self and becoming all ears. Few are capable of this. But there is more. To be with God and to be with another person also means being able to answer. That is, what you have just put to death within yourself when you became all ears — your very self — you must suddenly call back to life. In fact, to be with God and to be with another person means learning to die and rise again, to die and rise again, to die and rise again... But this ability should come in useful to us one day.