Today’s Gospel contains three parables: the weeds and the wheat, the mustard seed, and the yeast. Christ tells us, each time, that this is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. Like many aspects of our faith, it is beyond our comprehension, so we must use many analogies to get at the truth.
In the first parable the kingdom of Heaven is the man, if you read closely, the sower. We are reminded that Heaven is being in the presence of God. We have been sown by our Father and are called to bear good fruit. We suffer in this world because our Father’s enemy has sown evil near us, but we persevere to the end so that the weakly-rooted but good wheat is not accidentally harmed.
In the second parable, the kingdom is a mustard seed which grows and makes a place of refuge for the birds. Here, we are reminded that the Church is the kingdom of God, and we believe its full reality exists within the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church, then, is a place of refuge for all souls who seek the kingdom of Heaven.
In the third parable, the yeast is the kingdom. The kingdom of Heaven is not a passive entity but an active force. It lifts up and fills all the world.
We learn today that to be in Heaven is to be with our Father, that the Church is, truly, Heaven on earth and a place of safe refuge, and that as members of the Church, we are to be a force of good in the world who give it life and structure as we raise it up.