“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. - Matthew 11:28

         

         Pride has been one of the deadliest sins in this world, indeed. Pride creeps into us slowly and silently and before we actually realize it, we start doing things because of pride. How many times have we encountered a problem but refused to ask for help or to accept any help because we thought we could solve it on our own? How many times have we not accepted the negative outcome of things and events in life because we felt that life is unfair but the truth was it was just our ego that was actually hurt?  A lot of times we put too much credit on ourselves for achieving and having all the good things in life and forget who we must thank for, for the optimism, the strength, the courage and the determination that we had as we strived to get what we wanted.

We tend to choose to carry our burdens alone because we don’t want to burden others. We tend to pretend that we’re all strong and mighty and don’t need help in facing our problems because we know that it will all just pass. If we continue this way of thinking, our burdens will slowly pull us down until we lose all our strength to keep standing up. It will slowly create an empty space within us that is somehow never filled by anything in this world. We try to flee from the emptiness that we feel through earthly distractions so we could make ourselves believe that that emptiness in us will be filled. But then as the temporary euphoria of that escape tactic, we will slowly feel that hollow part in us that we tried to fill in crashing right back into us.

In the gospel, it is already God who’s inviting us to share our burdens with Him and to entrust Him with it. He will give us rest, if only we would seek for Him and ask Him for help. God will fill that hollowness within us and no escape hatches will be equivalent to God’s comfort as we carry our burdens in our everyday life. These burdens may come from stress at work, grumpy professors or work mates, ill-mannered or irritating classmates, or the loads of work in school that just somehow manage to be never ending and even taunt us in our sleep. All of these will become lighter for us to bring if we only ask for assistance. There can be two kinds of help we can receive. The first one may come from through our close friends and family, they will be the physical presence that we might need as we face our burdens. The second may come from God Himself and we can achieve this through prayer. When we pray to Him, we feel comforted. Even though our problems weren't solved, when we talk to God, we feel like He has refilled our strength to face our problems with more perseverance.

It is only from God that we can find our true rest and let us not hesitate to ask Him for help when we really need one because maybe some problems that we encounter are not meant for us to face alone. We’ll never know unless we ask. 

-Katrina Alvarado