What a gift for any one of us when someone offers their help—to go on an errand, to drive across town, to shop, to clean, to help in one way or the other. Sometimes I may be asked to clean up a mess I didn’t make, or stretched to the limit because someone else didn’t show up, or caught up in normal family or personal chaos. In such situations, how healing it would be to hear the words: “come and rest a little.”

Yet that is exactly what Jesus does. He invites us to bring him our personal needs and those of people we love. To lay before him the conflicts and personal issues, the worries of friends and family, the hopes and failures that are part of our daily routine. Imagine sitting quietly with Jesus before you; imagine Jesus looking into your eyes and saying: “Come and rest awhile; there is nothing here that you and I cannot manage together.”

—The Jesuit Prayer Team