Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 9, 2023 – Zechariah 9:9-10; Romans 8:9, 11-13; Matthew 11:25-30

How many of you have ever been to St. Patrick’s Cathedral? Put up your hands. So, almost everybody. St. Patrick’s Cathedral began construction around 1838. There was an old Catholic church there that had been foreclosed upon by the bank and abandoned. And Archbishop John Hughes - they used to call him Dagger John because he was so tough to deal with - Archbishop Hughes bought the property. And then he got thirteen very wealthy New Yorkers, some of them non-Catholic, each to contribute ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand dollars in 1838 was a huge amount of money. With that money they laid the foundation of the Cathedral. From that point on, the Cathedral was built, they used to say, with the pennies of the poor. All the Irish immigrants chipping in a penny or two each week from their meager paychecks.

Construction stopped for a little while during the Civil War. But the building wasn’t completed until the mid-eighties of the nineteenth century - after this parish began. Now, it’s a national landmark. At the time it opened, it got rave reviews from architectural journals and from the popular press. And it’s a beautiful building. Perhaps the most beautiful building in New York City. And, for a little while, it was the tallest building in New York City - for just about a year - and then someone built something that was taller. 

When you walk out of the front doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, what are you looking at? You’re looking at Rockefeller Plaza, another landmark set of buildings in New York City. Just a hundred years after they started the construction of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, they tore down all the ramshackle buildings and began construction of Rockefeller Center Plaza. It had been owned by Columbia University in the 1800’s. And Columbia wanted to lease it to the Metropolitan Opera, which was located way down south. You know, when the Cathedral was being built, it was out in the country. New York City ended at 14th Street. But the Met couldn’t afford to buy and build on that property. So, eventually, Columbia got John D. Rockefeller Jr. to take a 66-year lease on the property. And he began building the complex of buildings that’s there now. For a long while it was an unprofitable venture and the poor Rockefeller’s were losing money on it. But eventually, other large corporations bought in, so that now, it pays its current owners the equivalent of billions of dollars in rental fees.

But when you look across the street from the Cathedral, what you see is the beautiful Rockefeller Center promenade. A mall that is tilted slightly down toward the ice-skating rink. And in that mall is a tremendous sculpture of Atlas. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Atlas is bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders. The globe is open, and you can see the axis north-south inside the globe. When the architect created the statue, he created it so that the point of the north axis would point toward the North Star. The implication being that the North Star is the guiding star for navigators. As we navigate our way into the future, our sure guide will be capitalism. Only capitalism can help us to survive. That was the mantra of people like Ayn Rand, who wrote one novel called Atlas Shrugged. If Atlas shrugs, the whole world goes to pieces.

But shortly after the statue was erected, another one of the tall buildings was built on the northwest corner of Sixth Avenue, The Avenue of the Americas, obscuring the North Star, so that now the North Pole simply points toward another gigantic financial monstrosity.

But, if you stand in the mall, and look back, what do you see? You see the bronze doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. And there’s sculptures all over the doors. Across the top there is a sculpture of Christ and his Apostles. It’s not a crucifixion. He’s just standing with His arms reaching out this way, and they’re all bowing toward Him. But there are several saints on the doors. There is, of course, St. Patrick. Why not? And St. Joseph because he is the patron of the universal church. And then there are St. Frances Cabrini, St. Elizabeth Seton, St. Isaac Jogues and St. Katari Tekawitha.

St. Patrick was kidnapped as a teenager, by pirates who forced him into slave labor on the island of Ireland. When he finally escaped, he went back to England or Wales and learned what he needed to learn to become a priest and begged to go back as a missionary to tell his captors about the wonders of Jesus Christ.

Frances Xavier Cabrini was an Italian immigrant and, like most immigrants in the nineteenth century, she was shunned and despised. But not only by the aristocracy, but also by the clergy and the Bishop of New York, who wanted nothing to do with her little, tiny Italian order and shunted her off to Chicago, the wild west. There she settled, and she bore the burden of other immigrant populations, teaching her sisters how to care for the sick and the poor. 

Elizabeth Ann Bailey Seton was born to aristocracy in New York City. Her family were wealthy and belonged to the important church, the Episcopal Church. As a young woman she did the unthinkable, she married a Catholic. And polite society turned their backs on the young Seton. They went on a European tour and Elizabeth’s husband died in Italy. She came home a pauper, with children to care for. She opened a little school. And none of her former friends would send their daughters to her school. Oh no. So, finally it became a little Catholic school for poor Catholic kids. And finally, she founded a religious order, The Sisters of Charity, to care for the poor, and teach the children of the poor to bear the burdens of those for whom nobody else cared. 

Isaac Jogues was born in France to a wealthy family and became a Jesuit priest. Pampered.  Extremely well educated. But he wanted to go to the missions in the newfound land of America. He went to Quebec, and he was assigned to work with the Hurons. After traveling with them for some distance, they were attacked by their enemies, the Mohawks. He was seized, beaten, and tortured and kept a slave until in Albany, Fort Oranje, the Dutch Protestants rescued him and shipped him back to France. He begged to go back to the New World. The French and Indian Wars were over. And part of the treaty between France and England was that England would allow Catholic missionaries to go among the Iroquois. Isaac went back to the same village of Ossernenon, where he had been tortured, to teach about Jesus, until the day when he was tomahawked to death.

About fifty years later, in that same village, a Mohawk chieftain and his wife, a Huron captive, gave birth to a little girl. When she was four years old, they all caught the smallpox. Her parents died and she was adopted, according to tribal custom, by her uncle, another fierce Mohawk chieftain. He had no use for the Christians and forbade her to go anywhere near the missionaries. Finally, Catholics from across the river - it’s now the little town of Fonda, which was then called Caughnawaga - Mohawks came and spirited her away across the river by night. From there they shipped her off to Canada, where she would be safe in a Christian village. She was severely disfigured by the results of the smallpox. Had difficult vision. In that little village she was baptized. Led a life of severe mortification. Sacrificing almost everything for her people, that they may somehow come to Jesus. And then she died.

Look across at the mall and you see Atlas, the symbol of futility, bearing forever the burdens of the world. It is saying, he tells us, that the only escape from the burdens of the world is relentless, relentless economics. Then look back and see the Savior who bore the burdens of the world and five of his six followers who bore the burdens of their people.

Jesus says, “Come unto me, all you who are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon your shoulders and learn from me. But, unlike the burdens of the world, my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.