Monday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
The spiritual growth
He proposed another parable to them. “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).” Mt 13,31-35
Today Jesus explains the dynamics of the kingdom of heaven through two parables: that one of the mustard seed which, once grown, becomes a tree large enough to accommodate under its shade all the birds of the sky which need it and that one of the yeast, which rises and makes light all the dough. The two images are complementary: the first enlightens us on the target of the human and Christian growth of those who have met the Lord and the second on how it is possible to grow. The parable of the mustard seed announces, in fact, that we must become a large tree to make available and offer shelter from the life’s difficulties to the young and to the poor people. That of the yeast, however, indicates how we can cooperate to become that tree: to open up to the others, particularly to those most in need of help, so that we can all grow together as a dough which yeasts: it is not possible to grow first on our own to make a shadow later. Each of us has the memory of hands which knead the meal, so that the whole mass can absorb all the yeast and ferment. Slow and repeated movements, combining different elements and causing to reach a lightness and an amalgam which before, when they were separated, they had not. It is the image of the lightness of the spirit which must permeate the works of charity. Too often, in these recent years, the dedication to the others has been accompanied by critical attitudes or, even, by accusing judgments which have nothing to do with the evangelical charity and reminding us, rather, the leaven of the Pharisees. Don Primo Mazzolari was used to say: “We are committed. We commit ourselves, not the others, or who is above or those who are below. We are committed, without expecting that the others commit themselves, without judging those who do not agree, without condemning those who do not agree, without trying to understand why they do not agree. The world becomes new if someone becomes a new creature”. We ask the Lord to renew our dough and make us food for others, but lightly, like freshly baked rolls!