"The kingdom of
heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his
field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the
greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come
and lodge in the branches thereof " (Mt. 13:31-32).
In the East, the mustard plant can grow as high as
12 feet, though its seed is extremely small, so that the Jews in the times of
Christ used to have a saying: "As small as a mustard seed." That the
comparison of the Kingdom of God to the mustard seed was true was made visible by the rapid
outspread of the Church in pagan countries. The Church, while starting as a
small religious association insignificant for the rest of the world,
represented by the few uneducated Galilean fishermen, spread throughout the
entire world of that time within two hundred years, from barbaric Scythia down
to parched Africa, from far away Britain to exotic India. People of the most
different races, languages and cultures found salvation and the world of the
Spirit in the Church, in the same way that birds find shelter in the branches
of a great oak in a storm.
The transformation of a human by grace,
discussed in the parable of the seed growing in the ground, is also seen in the
next very short parable about <see next chapter>
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