Yeast

The real Christian life is to protect formalities in religious acts and materialism. Is yeast needed? Jesus warns us to watch the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod (cf. Mk 8, 15).

At that time, the apostles did not understand Jesus’ admonition. Their thoughts were not By God’s thoughts; they thought only of earthly things. That’s why Jesus did them he despises not to think temporal, but to draw to the depths, to look like God: not to the outer face, but the heart (cf. 1Sam 16: 7). How yeast helps ferment the dough on bread, so this symbol becomes a sign of the human interior, a change of life. The leaven of the Pharisees means their hypocrisy and formality, to be based on external religious acts. They do not live according to how they teach. They read the Saints writing, pray long, give alms, but not convert, improve, and please God, but to be praised and admired by people. However, they are inside empty. God doesn’t like them. They desire only profit, power, and fame. The leaven of Herod means life in comfort, in religious indifference. Herod is the type of person who can agree with everyone. He can do it compromises on both sides. He is an outstanding Catholic; for others, a liberal, Democrat, and who else. A man of a thousand faces. It is adaptable and changeable like a plasticizer, a man without a backbone. Its primary motto is profit: only to make something dripping from it. We can safely say about such a person that where wind, tade mantle. Unfortunately, Herod and the Pharisees were not extinct. Even today, they have different forms, and they infest their surroundings and our hearts with their thoughts and way of life.

Modern today we call it consumerism, indifference, materialism, pretense. How much of it has become domesticated in our hearts? And let’s ask ourselves: Am I not such a Pharisee or Herod for my surroundings? St. Paul said, “Don’t you know that a little leaven leavened the whole dough? Clean the old leaven, that you may be a new way ”(1 Cor 5: 6-7). Housewives certainly know the dough fast. It sours if they mix a little fresh yeast in it and leave it in a warm place. Yeast has the power to transform from within. For example, a small amount is enough. Similarly, a small batch of growths is enough to disturb the village’s peace; a small group of drunks drew other colleagues among themselves; two women standing in the middle of the street laying on other neighbors “stick” themselves and talk about whom they can. But how hard it is to transform the other way around!
Jesus is calling us today to become good bread and good, that is, good
his, leaven. And thou shalt keep the leaven of the Pharisees, that is, of hypocrisy, and the leaven of Herod, that is, indifference and consumerism, does not mean isolating oneself from the world, but fulfilling it with God’s word, God’s thoughts, and especially the Eucharist. God can transform from within into good bread, which will be a joy and strength for our surroundings. But at the same time, we become the leaven that turns our surroundings into God’s kingdom by the power of the Holy Spirit who is in us. For what is in our heart is even on the tongue and in life – it cannot be hidden. Let us become the useful leaven of Jesus Christ, that it may be fulfilled as soon as a possible prayer from our Father’s prayer: “Thy kingdom come” (Mathew 6:10)