Sermon on Matthew 11:25–30

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”

1. Dear brothers and sisters,There are words in the Gospel that seem to speak directly to the deepest needs of the human heart. Today we hear such words from Jesus:

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Jesus knows that human life can be difficult. He knows that we become tired—not only physically, but also inwardly. There are burdens that cannot be seen from the outside: worries about the future, disappointments, loneliness, guilt, illness, problems in the family, fear for those we love, and questions for which we cannot find an answer.ometimes we carry these burdens silently. Other people may see us smiling and think that everything is fine, while inside we are struggling.nd it is precisely to such people that Jesus says: “Come to me.”

1. “You have revealed these things to the childlike”At the beginning of today’s Gospel Jesus thanks his Father:

Jesus is not condemning education or intelligence. Faith does not require us to stop thinking. But there is something that intelligence alone cannot give us: a heart open to God.child knows how to trust. A small child does not understand everything his father or mother does, but he knows whose hand to hold.hat is also an image of faith.e do not understand everything God permits in our lives. We do not understand why some prayers seem unanswered, why suffering comes, why good people sometimes experience terrible things, or why God’s plans are so different from ours.aith does not mean having an answer to every question. Faith sometimes means saying:

“Lord, I do not understand, but I still trust you.”

This is the wisdom of the childlike.

2. “Come to me”Notice that Jesus does not first say: Understand me.He says: “Come to me.”Christianity is not first of all a collection of ideas or moral commandments. At its center is a person: Jesus Christ.When we are tired, Jesus does not simply give us advice. He gives us himself.He does not say, “Solve your problems first and then come to me.”He says: Come as you are.Come with your fears.Come with your wounds.Come with your sins.ome with your doubts.Come with the burden you have carried for years.ome even if your prayer is poor and you do not know what to say.Sometimes the most sincere prayer may consist of only a few words:

Jesus, I am tired. Help me.”

And that can be a very deep prayer.

3. Jesus does not promise a life without burdens.But we should notice something important. Jesus says:

“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.”

This means that Jesus does not promise to remove every burden from our lives.here will still be responsibilities. There will still be sacrifices. There will still be crosses.He difference is that we no longer carry them alone.The yoke was placed on two animals so that they could pull a load together. We can see in this a beautiful image of our relationship with Christ. When Jesus invites us to take his yoke, he invites us to walk with him.The burden may remain, but Christ carries it with us.erhaps the situation in our family does not immediately change. Perhaps the illness remains. Perhaps the difficult person remains difficult. Perhaps tomorrow we will still have the same responsibilities.ut something within us can change.

And sometimes this knowledge gives us the strength to carry what yesterday seemed impossible.

We discover:

I am not alone. Christ is here.

4. “Learn from me”

Jesus then says something remarkable:
“Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.”
We might expect him to say: Learn from me because I am powerful. Learn from me because I perform miracles. Learn from me because I know everything.
Instead, he says:
Learn from my meekness and humility.
The world often teaches us something different. Be strong. Defend yourself. Make sure others recognize your importance. Do not allow anyone to be better than you.esus shows another way. Humility does not mean thimking that we are worthless.It means knowing the truth about ourselves before God.

 

Humility does not mean thinking that we are worthless. It means knowing the truth about ourselves before God.

Everything we have is ultimately a gift.

Our life is a gift.

Our talents are gifts.

Our faith is a gift.

The people who love us are gifts.

Even the ability to do good is supported by God’s grace.

The humble person therefore does not need constantly to prove himself before others. He can simply live before God.

And that brings freedom.

5. “You will find rest for your souls”

We all search for rest.

We take holidays. We sleep. We try to escape from stress. All of these things can be good and necessary. But there is a tiredness that sleep cannot cure.

It is the tiredness of the soul.

A person may sleep eight hours and still wake up inwardly exhausted.

Why?

Because the heart also needs rest.

And the deepest rest of the human heart comes from knowing:

I am in God’s hands.

I do not have to control everything.

I do not have to solve everything today.

I do not have to understand everything.

I can entrust what I cannot change to God.

Saint Augustine expressed this beautifully when he wrote that our hearts are restless until they rest in God.

This is the rest Jesus promises.

Not an escape from reality, but peace in the middle of reality.

6. Bring your burden to Christ

Dear brothers and sisters, perhaps each of us has brought some burden with us today.

Maybe nobody else knows about it.

But Jesus knows.

During this Holy Mass, especially when we look toward the altar, we can place that burden before him.

We can simply say:

“Lord Jesus, this is what I am carrying. I give it to you. I cannot carry it alone anymore. Carry it with me.”

And then listen again to his words:

“Come to me.”

Not tomorrow.

Not when you become better.

Not when all your problems have been solved.

Come now.

For the heart of Christ is not closed to the tired, the weak or the wounded.

It is precisely for them that it is open.

May we therefore learn to come to Jesus every day—in prayer, in his Word, in the Eucharist, and especially when life becomes difficult.

And when our hearts become heavy, may we remember his promise:

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Lord Jesus,
when I am tired, let me come to you.
When I am afraid, teach me to trust you.
When my burden becomes heavy, carry it with me.
Make my heart meek and humble like yours,
and give my soul the rest and peace
that only you can give.

Amen.

uAfter the young man leaves,Jesus turns to his disciples and says.Truly I tell you,itt will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.And then He used the striking image of the camel and the eye of a needle.

At first sight,these words may sounds like a condemnation of wealth.But Jesus is speaking about something deeper.The real danger is not possessing things.The danger is allowing things to possessus.A person can have very little and still be complete attached to it.Another person may posses much and yet remain generous free,and ready to share.The decive question is not simply.How much do I have? The deeper question is what has my heart?

This is why the image of the camel is so powerful.A camel carrying a heavy load cannot pass through tiny opening.In a similar way we cannot enter God’s kingdom while insting on carrying everything with.

Lord,free my heart from everything that separates me from you.Teach me to use what a possess without becoming possessed by it.Give me courage to surrender what You ask of me.And when following You seems to difficult,help me remember your promise.

 

 

 

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He respects his freedom.

The young man came looking for eternal life. Eternal life was standing before him in the person of Jesus Christ. Yet when he discovered the price of discipleship, he turned away.nd notice: he went away sad.This tells us something important about the human heart. We often believe that happiness consists in holding tightly to what we possess. But sometimes the very things we refuse to surrender become the source of our sadness.

We say: “I cannot live without this.”

Jesus says: “Trust me. There is something greater.We say: “I cannot give this up.”J

esus says: “Follow me, and you will find treasure in heaven.”

 

5. The Gospel asks for a decision

Dear brothers and sisters, perhaps today Jesus is not asking us to sell our house or give away everything we own. But he certainly asks each of us:

Is there something standing between you and me?

Perhaps it is attachment to money.

Perhaps an old resentment we refuse to forgive.

Perhaps a sinful habit.

Perhaps pride.

Perhaps excessive concern about what other people think.

Perhaps fear of the future.

Perhaps we want to follow Christ — but only as long as he does not interfere too much with our plans.

Then Jesus says to us what he said to the young man:

“Come, follow me.”

He does not promise that following him will always be easy. But he promises something greater than comfort: life with him.

The young man possessed many things, but he lacked one thing — the freedom to put Christ above everything else.

May we therefore ask ourselves today:

“Lord, what do I still lack? What prevents me from following you more completely?”

And when Jesus shows us the answer, may we not go away sad.

May we have the courage to let go of whatever separates us from him and say:

“Lord Jesus, you are my true treasure. Teach me to use the things of this world without becoming their slave. Free my heart from everything that keeps me from you. Give me the courage to follow you wherever you lead, for in you alone I find the fullness of life.”

Amen.

Dear brothers and sisters, Today’s celebration takes us to the mystery of heavenly glory – to the end of Mary’s earthly pilgrimage. The liturgy directs our gaze to her, taken up body and soul to heaven, united forever with her Risen Son in the glory of heaven. Let us look to the fulfillment of her journey, to the moment of the final encounter with God. At the same time, today’s Gospel, read a moment ago, takes us back to its beginning – to the moment of the Annunciation. There we see the young Mary, who suddenly sets out on a journey to visit Elizabeth. She already carries Jesus within her, although the world does not yet know about it. Her long journey through the Judean mountains shows us the beginning of the same journey that today finds its fulfillment in the glory of the Assumption. Thus, the liturgy, by contrasting the glory of heaven with the daily fidelity of Mary, shows us the fullness of the journey of faith. On the one hand, we see the goal – heaven, glory, union with God. On the other – the path that leads to it: obedience, faith, service. The goal and the path belong to Mary, but they are also our predestination. Mary was taken up to heaven not only for herself. She goes before us so that we can follow her path. Mary teaches us how to travel the same path so that we can reach where she already is.

Brothers and sisters, we confess in the Creed: I await the resurrection of the dead and eternal life in the world to come. In Mary assumed into heaven, we see a foreshadowing of the world to come – the world of God, the world of the redeemed. God does not desire to save only the soul. He desires to save man in all his fullness, soul and body. In Mary, who fully participates in Christ’s victory over sin and death, we discover the beauty of God’s plan for each of us.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us that at the end of time the Kingdom of God will reach its fullness. After the Last Judgment, the just will reign with Christ, glorified in body and soul (CCC, 1042). And further: “The visible universe will also be transformed so that the world, freed from every obstacle, may serve the just, who share in the glory of the Risen Jesus” (CCC, 1047). In Mary, full of glory, we can see a foreshadowing of this transformed reality.

Let us note that all those to whom Mary appears, and I am thinking here of private apparitions, describe her beauty. Fatima. The children of Fatima call Mary “the Lady brighter than the sun”. Lourdes. St. Bernadette confessed that the Mother of God was so beautiful that “once we had seen her, it was impossible not to desire to die and see her again”. La Salette. The children describe the “Beautiful Lady”. The beauty of Mary derives from the beauty of God’s glory, a foretaste of which is given to those who have seen her. Yes, in Mary our future is revealed: the beauty of the saved man, the glory of creation renewed in God.

Brothers and sisters, today’s celebration is very joyful. The source of that joy is that one of us, a woman, a mother, was taken up to heaven. In Mary, heaven opened for the entire human race. In her, God shows where faith leads, where everyone who trusts in Him goes. And what path does one take to that glory? The Gospel clearly says – it is the path of faith, obedience to the word of God and readiness to allow Him to act. Mary uttered her Fiat – “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word!” (Luke 1:38). This is not just a sentence from Holy Scripture. It is the attitude of a whole life – of full trust and devotion to God. Elizabeth, moved by the inspiration of the Spirit, recognizes in Mary a woman of faith. She cries out: “Blessed are you who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to you by the Lord” (Luke 1:45). This is the heart of Mary’s journey – the trust that God will fulfill his promise, even if it means leading through mystery and the cross. She allows God to work in her in things that seem humanly impossible. For Mary knows that nothing is impossible for God.

Today, when we look to the Assumption, we learn two things from her: hope and trust. Mary shows that our life has meaning, that the goal of human history does not end in the grave, but leads to the glory of the Resurrection. She also teaches us that this journey can only be traveled in an attitude of listening to the word of God and humble trust. In Mary we find not only a model, but also a companion on the journey. She never ceases to be with us – just as a mother does not abandon her children. In her, heaven becomes close, and God appears not as a distant ruler, but as a Father who longs to receive us into his arms.

Brothers and sisters, may today’s celebration ignite in us a desire for heaven. May our daily lives become a journey of faith—the path that Mary has already traveled and that she shows us. For if we follow in her footsteps, we will arrive where she leads us – to the Father’s house.

Today’s Gospel of St. Matthew presents a woman from the vicinity of the port city of Tire, in present-day Lebanon, where Jesus went, not by chance. Many say that he actually went north to meet the woman and heal his daughter. Because he recognized the woman’s deep faith before she appeared and began to cry: “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is terribly troubled by an evil spirit.”

The Canaanite mother must have heard a lot of good things about Jesus when she decided to find Him and ask for help. The motive for her search for Jesus, the Son of David, was her love for her daughter, who was suffering terribly. The meeting therefore does not seem to be a matter of chance, although Jesus’s behavior after hearing the woman’s fervent plea is unpleasantly surprising. Jesus did not say a word to her, which does not mean that he ignored her. The woman called out her plea many times, disturbing the disciples, who advised him to let her go for the sake of holy peace. They wanted to avoid the crowd of curious people; perhaps they felt insecure beyond the borders of Galilee. On the other hand, we don’t know what they meant by that dismissal. The motive for their intervention was an effort to avoid possible problems of their own. They didn’t really care about the woman’s worries.

Jesus told the disciples that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. However, the woman continued to beg Him, falling on her knees before Him. There was an exchange of sentences between Jesus and the woman that today does not sound good to the Christian ear, but it looks like something from the test of faith of a mother from the vicinity of Tire. The woman passed the test perfectly when Jesus said, with recognition and as if surprised: “Woman, great is your faith; let it be done to you as you wish.”

The evangelist further states that the daughter of the Canaanite woman regained health in one moment. Jesus went back to the Sea of ​​Galilee, which allows us to admit that the short trip from Syrophenicia – today’s Lebanon – was actually provoked by a desperate mother who had great faith in the power of Jesus, the Son of David. The basis and essential condition of religious life is faith. The crisis of the Church, authentic religious life, prayer, and morality is always the result of a crisis of faith.

Richard Rohr, an American Franciscan, says: “Until one accepts faith, hope, and love as the foundations of his life, his religiosity is a facade, an excuse, or a waste of time. Such an attitude is more part of the problem than part of the solution.”

Faith is a mysterious process of meeting God’s grace with human freedom. God bestows his infinite love on man and expects reciprocation. True, evangelical love is more an act of reason and will than of feelings. In evangelical love, feeling can be an accompanying element, but it does not play a fundamental role. Creative cooperation with God’s grace begins with its acceptance; it always takes place, and above all in those structures of the soul where relative human freedom functions.

The first three commandments from the stone tablets of the Decalogue show, among other things, the responsibility of man for the development, non-development, or complete disappearance of faith, hope and love. Man really cannot earn God’s love, but he can ask for it and express his consent to receive it in many ways. This is his fruitful collaboration with God’s gift of faith, hope, and love.

Two men who started as bitter enemies and ended as saints together. That’s the story of St. Pontianus and St. Hippolytus—celebrated together every year on August 13.

1. St. Pontianus — the Pope who resigned to save the Church

Pontian was Roman by birth and became the 18th Pope on July 21, 230, succeeding Pope Urban I. 

It was a chaotic time. The Empire was unstable, and the young Church debated how strict it should be with those who had denied the faith during persecutions.

In 235, Emperor Maximinus Thrax began a new persecution of Christians. One of its first victims was Pontian, who was arrested and exiled to the deadly mines on the island of Sardinia—the “unhealthy island” where prisoners rarely survived. 

Seeing that the Church in Rome could not be left without a leader, Pontian did something almost unheard of at the time: he resigned. On September 28, 235, he stepped down—making him the first pope in history to resign — so a successor could be elected. He died shortly after from exhaustion and ill treatment in the mines in 235.

2. St. Hippolytus — the brilliant rival

Hippolytus was the opposite of a simple administrator. He was a priest in Rome, one of the most important theologians and writers before the 4th century, a scholar who wrote in Greek at a time when the Roman Church was switching to Latin. 

He was also fierce and rigorous. He had opposed Pope Callixtus I for being too merciful to sinners and then opposed Callixtus’ successors. His followers went so far as to elect Hippolytus himself as a rival bishop of Rome — making him the first antipope in history. He held that position for about 18 years. 

He wasn’t a heretic in doctrine, but he believed the Church was being too soft. And for that, he split from communion with Rome.

3. The reconciliation in the mines

In 235, the same imperial order that condemned Pope Pontian also condemned Hippolytus. Soldiers took them both, together, to Sardinia to work as enslaved people in the mines. 

There, facing the same chains, the same darkness, and the same death sentence, the rivalry ended.

Hippolytus was reconciled to the Church and to Pontian. Pontian helped Hippolytus make peace with Rome before he died. Tradition says Hippolytus urged his own followers to return to the one Church and to choose the legitimate pope. 

Both died as martyrs from cruel treatment and fatigue in the mines. 

The persecutions eased, and Pope Fabian (236-250) had their bodies brought back to Rome. On August 13, probably in the year 236, both were solemnly buried in Rome — Pontian in the papal crypt in the Catacombs of Callixtus, Hippolytus in a cemetery on the Via Tiburtina. That is why they share the same feast day. 

4. Why we remember them together

They are not remembered for their power or their arguments, but for what happened at the end.

They are the patron saints of reconciliation in division. The Church holds them up as proof that no schism has to be final.

Hippolytus also had a long afterlife in popular devotion. Because his name was confused with the Greek hippos (horse), he became a patron of horses, correctional officers, and prison workers. And very close to you: the Austrian city St. Pölten is named after him — St. Hippolyt became St. Pölten. He is its patron.

In short:
Pontian = the pastor who loved unity more than his office.
Hippolytus = the intellectual who loved truth enough to admit he was wrong.

Together, they show that sanctity isn’t about never being in conflict — it’s about how you end it.

Would you like me to write this as a short homily/feast-day reflection for August 13th, or as a more historical fact sheet you can use for a presentation?

The Order of Poor Ladies — Ordo Pauperum Dominarum — is what the world now calls the Poor Clares. Officially the Order of Saint Clare, they are the Second Order of St. Francis: Franciscans, but contemplative, enclosed, and women.

1. A midnight escape

It began on Palm Sunday night, 1212. In Assisi, 18-year-old Clare Offreduccio, the loveliest debutante of a wealthy noble family, slipped out of her family’s palazzo. She ran to the little chapel of the Portiuncula, where Francis of Assisi was waiting.

He cut off her long fair hair, clothed her in a poor grey habit, and she vowed herself to Christ in absolute poverty. 

Her family tried to drag her back by force. Francis moved her to the rough, half-ruined church of San Damiano just outside the walls. There, her younger sister Agnes joined her, followed by their mother and then other women from Assisi’s well-to-do families. It was unusual — not peasants seeking security, but noblewomen deliberately choosing destitution. 

Clare called them simply the Poor Ladies.

2. What made them different

Every other women’s monastery in medieval Europe had endowments. Land, rents, dowries — guarantees you would not starve.

Francis and Clare refused them. Their rule was sine proprio—without property, either personal or communal. They would live by the work of their hands and by alms, day by day.

Clare wrote her own Form of Life, the first rule for a religious order ever written by a woman. Its heart is what she called the Privilege of Poverty. In 1216, Pope Innocent III granted it as an exception: the Poor Ladies of San Damiano alone were allowed to own nothing at all. Later popes tried to give them property for security. Clare fought them for 40 years, even on her deathbed in 1253. Two days before she died, Pope Innocent IV finally confirmed her Rule.

That is why, after her death, the Order she founded was renamed in her honor as the Order of Saint Clare, commonly referred to today as the Poor Clares. 

3. The charism

If the First Order (Friars Minor) preached poverty in the world, the Second Order lived it behind walls.

Three pillars:

1. Poverty as mirror. For Clare, poverty wasn’t asceticism for its own sake. Christ was the poor mirror, speculum, in which she saw herself. To be poor was to be free to love without owning.

2. Enclosure. Unlike the male Franciscans, Clare and her sisters led enclosed lives in monasteries. The cloister wasn’t punishment — it was a chosen garden. Francis told her: “Go to San Damiano and live there.” It became a place of intense sisterhood, prayer, and manual labor. 

3. Joyful contemplation. They are not social workers in the usual sense. Their work is prayer — the Liturgy of the Hours, long silent prayer, and what later centuries called perpetual adoration. The Church calls them contemplatives: their hidden life is offered for the world.

A typical day even now: rising before dawn for Vigils, Lauds, work (making altar breads, vestments, icons, supporting themselves), study, community recreation, Vespers, and Compline.

4. A turbulent history

The Order spread like fire. By 1260 there were more than 100 monasteries from Spain to Bohemia. Agnes of Prague, a Bohemian princess, built one of the most famous. In 1263 Pope Urban IV imposed a new rule that allowed communal property — many houses accepted it for survival. Those became known as Urbanist Poor Clares.

The ideal of radical poverty kept resurfacing:

• In 15th-century France, St. Colette of Corbie reformed the Order back to Clare’s original severity — the Colettine Poor Clares, still the strictest.

• In the 16th century, the Capuchin Poor Clares emerged alongside the Capuchin friars.

• In 1854 in France, the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration were founded, centered entirely on adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. 

They have been suppressed, exiled, bombed, and restored. The Gravelines convent in the Spanish Netherlands, for example, was founded in 1607 by English women who had to leave England to live as Catholics. That story repeated in every revolution. 

5. Where they are today

There are now about 20,000 Poor Clares in more than 70 countries, in over 600 autonomous monasteries. Each monastery is independent — there is no generalate, no motherhouse. Each abbess answers directly to the Pope.

They still call themselves officially OSC — Order of Saint Clare — but also Clarisses, Minoresses, or Second Order Franciscans. 

If you walk into Assisi today, you can still visit San Damiano. The choir where Clare and her first sisters prayed is tiny, stone-cold in winter, blazing in summer. The fresco in the chapel shows her surrounded by her sisters — women who chose to have nothing so they could have everything.

Today, on the feast of the martyr Saint Lawrence, we heard the words of Jesus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it produces much fruit. Above all, the grain of wheat represents Jesus himself. As a grain of wheat, he fell to the ground in his suffering and death, and with his resurrection he sprouted and bore fruit. The great harvest he bore is his mystical body, the Church, which was born from the Paschal mystery (suffering and resurrection).

But the story of the little grain of wheat also helps us better to understand ourselves and the meaning of our existence. After the words about the grain of wheat, Jesus continues: Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. (Jn 12:25).

“Hate” is a Semitic way of expressing it and means “to love less” (Deut. 21:15-17). Indeed, whoever wants to live only for himself and look only at himself is the one who loses his life. Only by giving ourselves up to others, only by saying “yes” to the richer life of God, only then will our life become great and sublime.

Ultimately, these grains of wheat that fall to the ground and die are us: our bodies will inevitably return to the ground one day. But Jesus guarantees that a new spring awaits us too. We will rise from death, and this time so that we will not die again. Lawrence succeeded in this task perfectly. He intercedes for us so that we too can succeed.