Fr. Rolheiser wrote a beautiful piece, “Finding Rest for Our Souls,” that I have abridged for this post because it speaks to the core of the verse we are reflecting on. It speaks to finding rest among so much activity that captures our life. Yale philosopher, Nicholas Wolterstorff, wrote a book entitled, “Lament for a Son.” It’s a chronicle of his struggles to come to grips with the death of his 25-year-old son, Eric, who died in a mountain climbing accident. He keeps asking: “Why? Why was a young person with such potential so tragically struck down? How does one make sense of a life that ends before being given a chance to achieve anything? Is his death to be lamented more than the death of another twenty-five-year-old who spent his life in routine but, through that routine, loved those he knew, trusted God, and cherished the earth? What is it that we carry into God’s abiding kingdom? Is it only love and faith and trust? Or is it culture too?” Fr. Rolheiser writes that our notes written and unwritten will lie mute in boxes for virtually all of us. Does it matter that our life stories, with all their unique and precious insights, will not interest anyone, nor even be known after we die? Does it matter that, as Thoreau says, when we reach middle age, we are forced into the kind of realism that salvages a woodshed from the materials we once gathered in hopes of building a bridge to the moon or a palace or a temple? Socrates once said that we come into life possessed by a divine madness that pushes us to try to recover wholeness by embracing another, trying to perpetuate our seed, and trying to get others to remember our deeds. Plato and Aquinas agreed. The ache for immortality is part of our hard wiring, an instinct nearly synonymous with our drive for life itself. We are compulsively driven to leave something behind, which will tell future generations that we are significant. Only in a true saint, in someone whose faith in God is so strong that they know and trust that the only mark which truly remains is the hidden mark one makes in the body of Christ, is this ache transformed so that it no longer restlessly haunts our every action. Those of us who aren’t saints play out and act out the same familiar tapes and scripts. We compulsively plant trees, have children, and write books to make some immortality for ourselves. When Christ says: “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest,” the rest of what he speaks is not a rest that we can give ourselves through a good night’s sleep or a good vacation. It’s a much deeper rest for the soul, a rest from all the compulsive restlessness that emanates from our genetic propensity to achieve that special something that would forever leave a mark.