6th Sunday after Epiphany 13.2.11 Leaven in the bread
When Our Lord was born at Bethlehem very few people knew the event was happening or how important it was. Forty days later the Lord came to His Temple and again very few knew there was anything special about the event. Only the faithful Simeon and Anna were able to recognize His presence.
God seems to like understatement. He likes to do things which can be recognized by those on the right wavelength, but which will be missed by others.
The Gospel today presents the two parables of the mustard seed and the leaven in the bread. They both speak of the Church as increasing in size and influence over time.
We have achieved the increase in size over the centuries, and to some extent the influence but we could do a lot better in both aspects.
In the present day world, so secular minded, it seems strange to many people that the Church should be taken seriously.
There are people who honestly think that religion has been relegated to the past and we have now emerged into a highly rational era where goodwill and dialogue should be enough to carry us through.
To us who have faith how strange it is that we have come to such a point that the God who made the world and who keeps it in being should be denied any say as to how it should be run!
To ignore God is like hanging from a rope over a ravine and then starting to cut the rope.
Religion is an entirely private matter, people say. But it is not so. There is a huge public dimension to religious belief or its absence.
For one thing what people believe in private will affect what they do in public. If we all think it is OK to steal, for example, that is what we will do in practice.
For another thing, God does exist and He cannot be removed from existence by anyone no matter how much they might want Him to go away.
For another thing we are going to suffer consequences if we break His laws. It will fall back on us. It has already. Look at the divorces, the abortions, the alienation in our society, the suicides, the stress of life - all caused by or flowing from sin.
Society at present is doing its best to self-destruct with repeated attempts to change laws relating to marriage, family life, moral values. Things were bad before and they are getting worse. Self-evident long-standing truths are being swept aside in the face of modernism and relativism.
And so the role of the Church is to rescue the world from itself. To be the leaven in the bread. Not by force but by persuasion - persuading people that they should live in union with the will of God.
It is a tall order to change other people’s minds. Especially if the change is towards a more rigorous and demanding way of life.
Beginning with ourselves the first thing is not to give way to the false thinking of the world. We lose so many from our ranks because they listen to the false gospel instead of the true one. We must arrest the slide. Nobody leave!
To resist the false seductive doctrines of the world we must be careful what we imbibe. Just as we are careful what we eat, so we must monitor closely what we read, watch, listen to. If we take in too much falsehood we can lose our faith. Many have so far.
Then with prayer and good reading, good listening etc we take a firmer grasp on the truth and live by it.
We then become the leaven in the bread. Attitudes of others will change if we are strong and we hold firm.
It will be possible only by God’s grace. This is the mystery. Just like a seed becoming a tree. Somehow it happens. Somehow the world will recognize its Creator and Saviour!
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