Reading 1
Jer 13:1-11
The LORD said to me: Go buy yourself a linen loincloth;
wear it on your loins, but do not put it in water.
I bought the loincloth, as the LORD commanded, and put it on.
A second time the word of the LORD came to me thus:
Take the loincloth which you bought and are wearing,
and go now to the Parath;
there hide it in a cleft of the rock.
Obedient to the LORD's command, I went to the Parath
and buried the loincloth.
After a long interval, the LORD said to me:
Go now to the Parath and fetch the loincloth
which I told you to hide there.
Again I went to the Parath, sought out and took the loincloth
from the place where I had hid it.
But it was rotted, good for nothing!
Then the message came to me from the LORD:
Thus says the LORD:
So also I will allow the pride of Judah to rot,
the great pride of Jerusalem.
This wicked people who refuse to obey my words,
who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts,
and follow strange gods to serve and adore them,
shall be like this loincloth which is good for nothing.
For, as close as the loincloth clings to a man's loins,
so had I made the whole house of Israel
and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the LORD;
to be my people, my renown, my praise, my beauty.
But they did not listen.
Gospel
Mt 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.
Meditation: Matthew 13:31-35
“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast.” (Matthew 13:33)
There are a lot of ways to look at Jesus’ parable about yeast. If we do some creative thinking, we can see the wheat as standing for the Eucharist, the living bread we receive at every Mass. After all, the Mass is what unites us to Christ and gives us a share in his kingdom. But if that is true, how should we see the yeast? The Eucharist is made from unleavened bread, like the ancient Passover bread. And Paul tells us that we are to get rid of the “old yeast” of sin, and become “a fresh batch,” without yeast, purified by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 5:7).
Here, as in many of his other parables, Jesus uses a symbol to turn our understanding upside down. The yeast Jesus is talking about is invisible: It is our faith, because only faith can bring the kingdom to life. It is the “leaven” of faith that lets Jesus, present in the Eucharist, rise up in us and do his work in the world.
Without faith, the transformation of the bread and wine, miraculous though it is, will have little effect on us. However, to be obedient, we don’t need a great amount of faith—just real faith. Simply to believe that Jesus is truly present for us in the Mass and to trust that he will give us his love and mercy is enough to start with. Then, as we continue to trust and to take him seriously, we can expect amazing things to happen. Like the woman who used only a little yeast to leaven a whole batch of flour, our little, but sincere, faith can make a big difference.
Jesus wants his love to grow in us. If we give our hearts to him at Mass, we will be blessed, and in turn, we will bless those around us. We will see miracles in our lives because the God of miracles will be with us. So let’s come to the Lord with expectant faith, for he is the most generous of fathers. Jesus told St. Faustina that those who “trust boundlessly” in him would receive all of his grace: “I rejoice that they ask for much, because it is my desire to give much, very much.”
“Lord, today I put my trust in your promises. Take my heart, and transform it with your love. Use my gifts to build your kingdom.”
No comments:
Post a Comment