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Theo Tigno•
7/26/2009 10:09 pm
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Monday, July 27th 2009 |
Matthew 13:31-35
Jesus proposed a parable to the crowds. "The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches."
He spoke to them another parable. "The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened."
All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables. He spoke to them only in parables, to fulfill what had been said through the prophet: I will open my mouth in parables, I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world.
Dawg's thought:
Today's prayer intention is for the protection of disabled children being used to test military weapons in North Korea.
Today's reflection comes from Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone:
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The Gospel text points out to us a way that we must follow. All pastoral and missionary action is useful for a more incisive apostolic action, but what counts most is that each one of us should be a good seed which can produce, thanks to divine help, an abundance of fruits.
Christians are therefore called to witness by their example to their convinced belonging to Christ and to his Church. Thus, they may become a leaven of holiness.
Jesus said this clearly when, in the same passage from Matthew's Gospel, he identified the Kingdom of Heaven not only with a tiny mustard seed but also with the leaven that causes the dough to rise. "The Kingdom of Heaven", he tells us, "is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened" (13: 33).
To have good bread it is not merely necessary to have new dough, even if it is fresh: what is necessary is the leaven which, when added to the flour, gives rise to an almost magic phenomenon: the mass of dough swells until the bowl can barely contain it. Indeed, this is caused by the force of life which is a property inherent in leaven.
A Christian author of the early centuries whose name was Origen wrote an interesting commentary on this short parable. He identified the three "measures of flour" mentioned in the Gospel with the human elements - body, soul and spirit -, which in order to ferment, that is, to be uplifted, need the Holy Sprit. Here too we can make a very timely application.
Today, the temptation of a modern brand of gnosticism which conceives of religion almost as an individual and private option to be lived in an intimist way is widespread.
But if it is also true that faith is first and foremost intimate friendship with Christ, then when this faith is authentic it cannot fail to be "contagious" to the point that it renews society and even creation, given that the whole of creation is part of the plan of salvation.
The Christian must not only be reconciled with being "good bread" but must also be the leaven of society.
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Take care and God Bless.
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