Castel Gandolfo – The mystery of salvation with which God works “in our lives and in history” does not “impose itself by force” or “arrives triumphantly.” Instead, His Kingdom grows “like a small seed that sprouts,” “expands and transforms the world from within,” and leavens the dough of human reality “without making a sound.” This is God’s way of “acting”, to which Christians are called to conform as they continue their earthly pilgrimage, “without hastily opposing others through arrogant judgments, without imposing ourselves through power and force and without losing trust in God’s work.”
Pope Leo XIV offered this reflection today before leading the Marian prayer of the Angelus in Liberty Square , Castel Gandolfo, where faithful and pilgrims had gathered outside the Apostolic Palace of the Papal Villas. The Bishop of Rome is spending several days there for a period of rest.
To illustrate this way of “acting” that Christians are called to follow in their apostolic and missionary mission, the Pope drew on the passage from the Gospel according to Matthew read during today’s liturgy, Sunday, July 19. In the Gospel, Jesus speaks to the crowds about the very nature and the way of being of the Kingdom of God through three images: the good wheat and the weeds, the mustard seed that sprouts in silence until it becomes a bush and the yeast in the dough.
Commenting on these three short parables, the Successor of Peter stressed that “God favors smallness, a sign of his discreet love, by which he leaves us free to accept or reject him. His love makes its presence felt even among the weeds, acts in a hidden and invisible way like the smallest of all seeds, and leavens the dough without making a sound.”
Pope Prevost acknowledged that “we sometimes expect God to do something spectacular; we want him to intervene from on high, immediately uprooting the weeds of evil.” At times, he continued, “we unfortunately model our way of being Christians and way of being the Church on this image. However, the Kingdom of God spreads even amidst the weeds, requiring us to train our vision so we can discern the good that sprouts despite the darkness of evil, and avoiding rash judgments. It comes like the smallest of seeds and thus calls for patience in accompanying these processes, so that we can recognize it in the little things of daily life and in the simplicity of ordinary existence. It grows invisibly like yeast in flour.”
These images, the Pope noted, reveal the style with which Christians are called to engage the reality that surrounds them.
“It is a matter,” the Pontiff said, recalling the words of the then-Cardinal Ratzinger in his address to Catechists and Religion Teachers, 10 December 2000, “of submitting ourselves to the logic of the seed — which is not that of success and greatness, but that of making ourselves small and serving others.”
“In this way,” Pope Leo XIV concluded, ” we will become like small seeds of the Gospel that sprout, and leavens of love that transform the dough of the world.”
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