When Jesus calls to us, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden,” he gives us himself. When we come to the altar, we receive Jesus himself, for the Eucharist is nothing less than the real presence of Christ. He replaces the burdens loaded upon us throughout the week with a burden that is meek and lowly in heart.

Humans are like donkeys. The Bible’s word for “donkey” is, literally, “burden-bearer” (hypo-zugion). Like donkeys, you and I are “burden-bearers.”

Our burdens are numerous. Some seem random: a freak accident, a horrible sickness, a loved one’s sudden death. Others people place upon us, like the scribes and Pharisees who, Jesus says, “bind heavy burdens (phortia) and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders” (Matt. 23:4). Often we are scribes and Pharisees to ourselves, for not infrequently our burdens are self-imposed: We are stubborn, making our own lives unbearable at times.

It is with good reason, then, that Jesus treats us like donkeys. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (11:28). These are what the Anglican Prayer Book calls “comfortable words,” leading people into Eucharistic celebration.

Our God is a gracious God, who cares for donkeys—including actual donkeys. “Six days thou shalt do thy work,” God commands the Israelites in the Book of Exodus, “and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass (hypozygion) may rest” (Exod. 23:12). It is not just people who get Sabbath rest; donkeys get to share in it as well.

We are in need of Sabbath rest. Our burdens make us long for it. That is why we go to Mass week after week. For it is there, at the altar, that Jesus gives us rest.

But does he truly? Jesus himself seems to question it, when he says, “Take my yoke (zygon) upon you. . . . My yoke (zygos) is easy, and my burden (phortion) is light” (Matt. 11: 29–30). The yoke may be easy and the burden light, but for all that, we are burden-bearers still, far removed from enjoying comfortable rest. It is small comfort if the difference between Jesus and the Pharisees is merely one of quantitative weight—his burden just a little less oppressive than what we suffer elsewhere. Less burdensome, perhaps, but hardly the rest for which we long and which he says he’ll give.

It is true: Once a donkey, always a donkey. No matter what, we are burden-bearers world without end, even in the eternal Sabbath rest. But the difference between the burdens imposed by scribes and Pharisees and the burden placed by Jesus is not just one of degree, but of kind.

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