The Holy Gospel according to 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.
Reflection: In the baking world, yeast is powerful tool. Though it often accounts for only about 1% of a loaf of bread, it causes that loaf to more than double in size. Of course, it also has the amazing effect of turning the dough soft and flexible as it rises. Without yeast, the dough would remain stiff and much smaller in size. The dough would not become the bread it was meant to be. And consuming that unleavened bread may not be so pleasant.
If you consider yourself to be the three measures of flour, and the yeast to be God, His holy Word and His clear Voice speaking to you, in what concrete ways do you see your life rising as a direct result? How do you see yourself becoming that which you are intended to be as a result of God entering your life? And do you see the effect as one that is truly transforming?
Sometimes the Word of God has little to no effect on our lives. That, of course, is not the fault of the Word of God; rather, it’s because we do not allow God to do His transforming work. For yeast to work, the dough must sit still for a while. So, in our lives, for God to do His work, we must PAUSE and allow Him to work gently and powerfully on our souls. This process requires that we internalize all that God speaks to us. Then His actions must prayerfully be permitted to work within us, and we must allow the change to be slow and certain in accord with His divine plan.
Sometimes we can also become impatient with the workings of God. Again, the yeast takes time to work. If we are impatient with God’s grace, then it may be like taking the dough and kneading it over and over before it even has a chance to work. But if we are prayerfully patient, allowing God to do His work in our lives according to His will and in His time, then little by little we will experience the transformation that He initiates. And so my brothers and sisters, PAUSE and LISTEN.
Action of the Day: See yourself as that dough and see God and His action in your life as the yeast. As you sit with that image in a prayerful way, let God reveal how He wants to work in you and how He wants to transform you.
Audio Reflection:
