Main news for 21 June 2026

Jesus' words are not always easy to understand, and at first their true meaning remains hidden even from His disciples. Only after the Teacher's explanations do they grasp that He is speaking not about bread, but about the teachings characteristic of these two religious parties. Let us try to understand what Jesus means.

Christ speaks of leaven on other occasions too. It is an image of something small that, when it enters a certain environment, affects it and changes its properties. Such, Jesus warns, are the teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees - they can poison the whole people of God.

What, then, is poisonous in these teachings? In the parallel passage in the Gospel of Luke (Lk 12:1) the leaven of the Pharisees is called hypocrisy. The legalism of the Pharisees, the reduction of relations with God to keeping a formal list of commandments instead of being truly changed from within - this is the poison of hypocrisy. If God's people (or the new people of God - the Church) are permeated by this poison, then there is no room left in them for love.

The leaven of the Sadducees is called in the Gospel of Mark the leaven of Herod (Mk 8:15). The Sadducees were not so much a religious party as a political one, seeking above all earthly, state power. And again we see that such an approach can also become a deadly temptation for the Church. She is called not to seek strength in the "worldly" sense, but to manifest the power of God, the power of righteousness, the power of love.