It has been suggested - and most people will probably agree that these words of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel (Mt 11:28-30) are the sweetest and most consoling that Jesus spoke during his public life.

As I write this reflection, we are in many places facing the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, which threatens to be even more severe than it has been. All of us have an urgent need of God's consolation in Christ Jesus, if we are not to fall into the despair of thinking that God has abandoned us.

From our reading of the First Letter of John - where John faced the presence of many antichrists - we learn to distinguish "the end of the world" from "the end of a world".

(1Jn 2: 18 declared "It is a last hour" - a more accurate translation than the usual "it is the last hour" - for, of course, John's age was not the end of the world).

So, neither for us does it appear to be the end of the world, but it is certainly the end of a world and as many people have expressed it: we must look for a new normal.

Whatever that new normal will be, we shall still need to listen attentively to Jesus' words and discover the lightness of his burden after the heaviness of the burden of the virus.