Paternoster rosary 5.1- Matthew 11:28-30

This is the first passage in the round praying "Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil" (or whichever version you prefer).

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

I suspect that at first it looks a bit tangential to the matter at hand, to say the least, but bear with me.
The yoke would have been readily understood as relating to the rabbinic characterising of taking up with a Rabbi to learn the Law from him. This was taking up the yoke of the Law to learn from it. So Jesus is putting himself in place of the Law as humankind's guidance. It is probable that the heavy burdens were the kinds of things that Jesus criticises in other places; in a word the legalism that imposes burdens but lifts not a finger to help.

One way to pray this is to think about the temptation to do things by rote and rule rather than living relationship to God and neighbour. The rules may be religious or they may be some other kind of rule but if they come before the demands of justice and mercy, Christ had hard words for that. Rules are good servants but bad masters. God, not the rules is supposed to be the ruler (pun intended).

The other way that for me this can inform my praying, is in reminding me that Christ's leading of me is gentle and not burdensome. Sometimes, in a time of trial we are tempted to think that God's will is too hard, with these words is an implicit promise that God will support us as we attempt his way; we are not on our own.

Yet another angle is to focus on firding rest: in our society lack of proper sabbath in our lives leads us into unnecessary temptation and trial. Our frenetic chasing after more, sometimes artfully disguised as serving our nearest and dearest (when in fact we are colluding in their discipleship to hurrydom), deprives us of God's commanded gift: rest. In Christ we rest from the labour of trying to earn heaven, in creation God has made us to function best with regular rest. We ignore it at our peril and make ourselves vulnerable to trials since when we are tired, we are less able to muster our intelligence or energy to spot and resist wrong.
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