Tuesday in the 30th Week of Ordinary Time, October 29, 2024

Luke 13, 18-21

Jesus said, “What is the Kingdom of God like? To what can I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that a man took and planted in the garden. When it was fully grown, it became a large bush and the birds of the sky dwelt in its branches.”  Again he said, “To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch of dough was leavened.”

Largely lost on us today, the Lord Jesus is teaching the crowds what the Kingdom of God is like in order to show that it differs greatly from the earthly kingdom of the restored Israel which the Pharisees have taught them to expect.  He does not describe the Kingdom in terms of ruling from the Nile to the Euphrates, nor does he speak of great palaces and lofty towers.  He does not speak of immense armies of Jews or of angels fighting the Romans.  Instead, he compares the Kingdom of God to “a mustard seed that a man took and planted in the garden.”  The Lord chooses an image completely opposed to that which the Jewish people had been taught.  Those listening to the Lord must have wondered greatly at what he was saying.  He was speaking a very different language to them.  

“A mustard seed that a man took and planted in the garden.”  Ancient cultures primarily used mustard for medicinal purposes.  The Greek physician Hippocrates used it to treat lung diseases and congestion.  Other peoples applied it to arthritis and heart disease.  This was no mere condiment, but an important tool of the physician.  The Lord speaks of the minute size of its seed.  Indeed, it is tiny, averaging 1-2 millimeters (.o5 inches) in diameter.  Now, the man in the parable planted a single mustard seed and “when it was fully grown, it became a large bush and the birds of the sky dwelt in its branches.”  Some varieties of the mustard plant grow two or three feet, while others can reach as high as six feet.  The plant matures three to six months after the seed is planted, so it grows quickly.  We can say, then, that this medically beneficial plant grows to a good size from a tiny seed in a short time.  The Lord Jesus is describing how the Faith — the Faith through which we are saved — will spread, how the Church will grow, after he waters its tiny seed with his Blood. 

“It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch of dough was leavened.”  Yeast is a living organism used to make bread dough rise.  It is also used in the fermentation process.  Ancient people, among them the Egyptians, thought of yeast as magical.  How it was able to make bread dough rise was not understood until Louis Pasteur’s work in the nineteenth century.  To the ancient Jews, then, it was mysterious, though common.  The woman in the parable kneaded a pinch of yeast into a batch of dough until it was spread throughout, and then the dough began to rise.  The Lord Jesus shows that the Faith will spread in a mysterious fashion.  The yeast signifies the grace that the Holy Spirit pours upon the Jews and Gentiles, in response to the prayers of the faithful, so that they may be converted to the Faith.  It would seem an impossible work, beginning with the Apostles, but by the time of the end of the Apostolic Age, many thousands of people had become Christians, and the growth was just getting started.

The Kingdom of God today exists on earth and yet is not of the earth, and its destiny is in heaven.  It is “not of this world” even while so many of its members are at parent living on earth in that they do not cling to the world but are making their pilgrimage from it to heaven.  Let us simplify our lives so that we may concentrate on this pilgrimage and arrive at our destination safely .