Gospel Reflection on Matthew 11:25-30
- Jul 3
- 3 min read
July 5, 2026
At that time Jesus declared, “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will. All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
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Lethbridge Polytech has a buffalo robe which tells the history of the college in an unfolding spiral that begins at the center with the creation of Turtle Island where we live.
This winter count robe will be added to over the years. That was how the First Nations people stored the information that was important to them.
For thousands of years, we've stored our information in books. Then along came the computer and today we create and store an enormous amount of data, and we hear about data storage places all the time.
26 million videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. Since about the year 2000, we create as much data every two days as humanity created over her first 4,000 years. We live in a world flooded with information.
At one time, data was a useful resource. Today, information is an unstoppable digital deluge. And this flood of data leaves us exhausted and fearful. Today, many people suffer from some form of nomophobia, no mobile phone phobia. We're afraid of being without our phones. How many times a day do we check our phone, check our news feeds? Studies show the dark side of this over-dependence, with its negative effects on our sleep, on our work-life balance, and on our fear of missing out.
Our world today is flooded with bits of information, but do we possess understanding? This gift is not the same as information.
Understanding is the ability to see the connection between things. That's what our world word 'intellect', describes: it has its root in the word ligare. Think of the word 'ligature' to tie together. Real understanding refers to the activity of first seeing how things are connected to each other and then to gaze upon the true inner nature of things, intus, intus-ligare, 'intellect'.
True understanding grants us the ability to form a perspective that goes beyond the disconnected appearance of facts and events and allows us to gaze into the thing's true nature. This capacity is neither inherited nor learned.
Today Jesus tells us that the gift of understanding is granted to the childlike. To know the mysteries of life doesn't come to those who are cultured or educated, but to those who are little. What distinguishes the childlike? The childlike are those who do not worship themselves, who have been set free from their ego. Jesus described this as accepting a yoke, refusing to act on our own.
A beautiful event in the story of St. Francis tells how when the Saint embraced a leper, he stopped worshiping himself. Humility is the gateway to a wisdom that goes beyond human knowledge.
The deepest connection between things lies in the way God weaves events together. The thread of Providence unifies history, gives it a direction. God brings this Providence to fruition, often using crooked lines to write straight. We need to be open to reading our story as it's written by God to see its real meaning. God reveals his mystery to those who are aware of their failure to love and recognize the dark part of their hearts. With God, we win when we lose, we become strong when we admit our weaknesses, and we become wise when we recognize our foolishness, adults, when we confess our smallness, and we enter into peace when we become aware of our fixations.
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