What Type of Leaven Are We?, Sixth Tuesday in Ordinary Time (I), February 16, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Votive Mass of St. Joseph
February 16, 2021
Gen 6:5-8.7:1-5.10, Ps 29, Mk 8:14-21

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• “Do you still not understand?” So Jesus asks the disciples and asks us. The specific context was about yeast when he warned them about the leaven, the corrosive teaching and example, on the one hand of the rigorist Pharisees and on the other the laxist Herodians. He wanted them to have, rather, the leaven of faith, conscious that a tiny bit of faith when placed in the “dough” of God’s power was able to accomplish great things. Jesus showed what a little bit of this leaven could do in the two miracles of the multiplication of the loaves and fish. He wants us to trust that with faith the size of a mustard seed we can move mountains, with some water in jars at a wedding we can have wine, with 12 relative nobodies we can have a message go out to all of the world. “Do you still not understand?,” he asks.
• Noah in today’s first reading is an example of this leaven of faith. God asks Noah to build a huge ark and to do so, not in a big ship building place, but in the middle of nowhere far from the ocean. The dimensions of the ark — 300 x 50 x 30 cubits, with a cubit being 18 inches or half a yard — were huge and would have taken some time to build. For weeks and months, people around him must have thought he was nuts. Imagine trying to build the Queen Elizabeth II on a farm in Iowa or up in the Rocky Mountains, far from water. But Noah trusted in the Lord and built. He, with his faith in God, was the leaven for the renewal of creation. God always starts small and builds. We see that with the Israelites, with the tribe of Judah within God’s people, with the “remnant” at the time of the exile, ultimately with Mary and Joseph, and then with the apostles. Many get corrupted by the leaven of the world or pseudo-religion. God always looks for the leaven of faith.
• As the Fathers of the Church were accustomed to preach, the Church is meant to function as Noah’s Ark, bringing everybody to salvation on the barque of Peter despite the storms of life on the water. The “nave” of a Church is named because the Church is meant to be the “navis” or ship like the ark as a means of rescue. Christ is like Noah on that boat.
• As we prepare to start Lent tomorrow, we can draw various practical lessons:
  • Our Lenten practices are supposed to help us become leaven of faith, not the leaven of Pharisaical rigor or Herodian laxity. We need to recognize, for example, that fasting is far more than about “having no bread,” but hungering for what God desires. As we unite ourselves to Christ in the desert in his prayer, fasting, and giving of his life for us, we become more and more capable of spreading our faith contagiously, like yeast in bread.
  • We need to be filled with greater wonder for the incredible miracles God has worked, most especially our redemption and the gifts of the sacraments. Just as he encouraged the apostles in the boat to draw the right conclusions from the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish, so he wants us to draw the right conclusion from the miracles we experience to which that multiplication of the loaves and fish point. We need to go from knowledge about them to understanding. Lent is a time for us to ponder the mystery of our redemption and sanctification more deeply.
  • We are called to be filled with gratitude over having been chosen for the ark of the Church and be filled with zeal for others to join us in that ark. Many have lost their appreciation for the gift that is the Church and consequently have lost their zeal to spread the faith. Sometimes this can come from lukewarmness, but often it comes from bad ecclesiology and soteriology. We begin to think that Jesus’ work in founding the Church on the apostles is rather superfluous, that we don’t need to be in the ark, because any-old-self-made-dingy is just as good, because the gentle waters of the world will lead everyone inexorably to the eternal shore. That’s not true. We don’t believe that. Some vessels will capsize. Many will hit stormy waters. Some will find whirlpools and waterfalls. Lent is a time for zeal.
  • We need to draw a lesson from the fact that God had Noah bring pairs onto the boat. This is not just an indication of the need for reproduction of new generations of creation. It’s a sign that we’re made to exist in communion. It’s not good for us to be alone. Jesus, himself, sent out the first disciples two-by-two even though they could have covered far more ground going out singly. The reason, however, is so that they could announce the good news by how they lived it, loving each other, forgiving each other, correcting each other, helping each other to trust in God’s providence and so much more. Lent is a time for this communion, this love, this growth together. Another can be leaven for us and we ought to be leaven for others. Lent is not a time just for solitary combat in the desert. It’s a time to pray together, fast together, and exercise charity together, with those with whom God has placed us, mutually encouraging each other, but also with the whole Church.
• Today at Mass, God does something greater than the miracle of the multiplications of loaves and fish and greater than the flood. He gives us himself as our food. He wants us to respond to this gift with faith, to understand what he’s asking, and to help others similarly to become with us this leaven, as we prepare with him to go into the desert on an ark! 

The readings for today’s Mass were:

Gospel Mk 8:14-21

The disciples had forgotten to bring bread,
and they had only one loaf with them in the boat.
Jesus enjoined them, “Watch out,
guard against the leaven of the Pharisees
and the leaven of Herod.”
They concluded among themselves that
it was because they had no bread.
When he became aware of this he said to them,
“Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread?
Do you not yet understand or comprehend?
Are your hearts hardened?
Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?
And do you not remember,
when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand,
how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?”
They answered him, “Twelve.”
“When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand,
how many full baskets of fragments did you pick up?”
They answered him, “Seven.”
He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download