Monday – 17th Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel – Matthew13:31-35

With Great Abandon!

Making Bread!

One thing I miss from our Dakin home is our gas cooktop/oven!!  Our new home has electric and, after 2 years here, I continue to struggle making the adjustment.  Nothing bakes the same way or time; it’s always a guessing game.  I am realizing that altitude may also play a part in the baking process.

I made zucchini bread a couple days ago and they finally came out exactly the way I wanted (and tasted).  But baking bread is still a challenge.  Getting the dough to rest and rise is an ongoing challenge.  Hard to realize that such a little ingredient like yeast could play such a big role in baking bread!

We hear about yeast in the second parable of today’s Gospel.  Jesus speaks of a woman who prepares 3 measures of flour to make bread.  The recipe I use requires about 4 cups of flour; out of that, I end up with 2 small loaves of fresh bread (pic).  However, the woman in today’s parable is using 3 measures of wheat flour.  That’s over a bushel of flour and would end up making over a dozen loaves of bread.  In Jesus’ time, baking bread was a daily chore but no family is going to eat that much bread in one day.

So what’s going on?  We know Jesus is a master story-teller. He is also a master exaggerator for the sake of making a point!  And the point here is all about faith, real faith in God and in Jesus!  It’s all about a faith so deep, so strong, that once it takes root in our heart, it grows with abandon and is impossible to uproot from our lives.  It is a faith that energizes our hearts and our lives to spread it around.  It fills us with love and hope for the future; it feeds our souls!

Creator of all life, no matter where we turn, you are there with us, to guide us and to shelter us from the storms of life. Be with us today and every day.  Help us to grow in faith in You and love for our brothers and sisters.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  Feast of the Presentation Gospel – Luke 2:22-40 We Are Family Church of St. Joseph, Nazareth 5 extremely short stories to start the day! Once all the people in a village decided to pray for rain. On the day of prayer, all the people gathered, but only one boy came with an umbrella. That is faith. When you throw babies in the air, they laugh because they know you will catch them. That is trust. Every night we go to bed without any assurance of being alive the next morning, but we still set the alarm to wake up. That is hope. We plan big things for tomorrow in spite of zero knowledge of the future. That is confidence. We see the world suffering, but still, we get married and have children. That is love. Faith, hope, love, confidence and trust!   Sounds like a perfect list of values/virtues for a happy family! Today’s Gospel tells us of another family – the Holy Family going up to Jerusalem with the baby Jesus to present Him to the Lord in ...
Read more
Image
Sunday – Feast of Corpus Christi Gospel – Luke 9:11b-17 Loaves and Fishes Church at Tabgha Throughout those 2 years of isolation from Covid,   I really missed my St. Kateri community.   I missed my native brothers and sisters.   I miss crowding ourselves into the chapel on a Sunday morning for Mass.   And I miss our community potluck meal afterwards. I think that I missed that simple meal the most; it speaks volumes to me about the community and about the values that should define our lives.   I said a ‘simple’ meal but actually it’s more of a constant miracle.   Jody, our director, and/or Ginger provide the main course.   And that’s it!   All the rest – sides, salads, pasta, dessert, bread and drinks   - all of that is left to the community.   Bring something to share!   We never know how many people will come!   We never know what they will bring!   Ginger always calls it a “loaves and fishes” event! ...
Read more
Image
Tuesday - Third Week of Easter Gospel – John 6:30-35 Knead to Know Cooking Class Over the past month or so, I gathered together a couple groups of my altar servers for a cooking class!   They learned not only my recipe for zucchini chocolate chip muffins but how to make them from scratch!   And, YES, they took home their finished products, or at least the muffins they didn’t wolf down as soon as they came out of the oven!   It was a fun, wonderful (and messy) experience!   Who knew that cracking eggs and measuring out flour could be so ‘untidy’.   But it brought home the lesson that, in order to get those yummy muffins, it takes time, effort and a heaping cup of patience. And it reminded me not only of their loyal service but those long months of Covid when they missed their Mass ministry.   So from time to time during the pandemic, I stayed in touch with them by dropping off goodie bags filled with chocolate chip cookies, zucchini chocolate ...
Read more