Today,
the liturgical texts, through these two parables, place before our
eyes one of the characteristics of the Kingdom of God: it is
something that flourishes slowly —as a mustard seed— but,
eventually, grows to offer shelter to the birds in its trees.
Tertulian said it like this: «We come from yesterday and we
fill everything». With this parable, Our Lord encourages us to
patience, fortitude and hope. These virtues are especially necessary
for those who devote themselves to propagate the Kingdom of God. We
must be patient, and with God's grace and human cooperation, wait for
the planted seed to grow while profoundly embedding its roots in the
good soil to gradually become a tree. In the first place, we need to
have faith in the virtuality —fecundity— contained
in the seed of the Kingdom of God. This seed is the Word; it is also
the Eucharist that is planted in us through Communion. Our Lord Jesus
Christ compared himself to «a kernel of wheat that falls to the
ground and dies (…). But if it dies, it produces many seeds»
(Jn 12:24).
The
Kingdom of God, our Lord goes on, is similar to «the yeast a
woman has taken and hidden in three measures of flour until it is all
leavened» (Lk 13:21). Here also the yeast capacity to
leaven all the dough is mentioned. This is what happens with “the
rest of Israel” which the Old Testament mentions: the rest will
have to save and leaven all the people. Continuing on with the
parable, we only need the yeast inside the dough, getting to the
people, to be like salt that preserves from corruption and makes all
food to taste (cf. Mt 5:13). Time is also of essence so that
it can carry out with its function by and by.
Parables encouraging
patience and the hopeful certainty; parables referring to the Kingdom
of God and to the Church, and that are also applied to the growth of
this same Kingdom in each of us.
