Notes 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.

Calling us to trust that God knows all our needs and will not leave us without care, the Lord Jesus Christ opens to us a new, almost unknown dimension of our life. We are so afraid of being left without necessities, of losing the means of existence, that this fear takes possession of the whole heart, and the poor are in no better position here than the rich. Yet the Lord speaks of a life that is not enclosed only within the material world and not limited only to the short span of earthly life. Christ's astonishing words about how the heavenly Father feeds the birds and clothes the flowers of the field reveal the meaningfulness and beauty of the world in which God has placed us.

And these words of Christ set before us a choice: what exactly constitutes the goal of our life. It is important that, by choosing God and His Kingdom, we lose nothing, because "all these things will be added to you"; but by choosing momentary well-being, we risk losing something infinitely precious and irreplaceable.

The prophet's words about vengeance on his enemies may seem an example of what is sometimes called "Old Testament vindictiveness." Yet Jeremiah has no intention of taking revenge. He merely hands his whole situation, completely and entirely, into God's hands. He understands perfectly: the work entrusted to him by God is not his work, but God's work. And he himself, Jeremiah, is only an instrument in this work, an executor from whom neither an assessment of the people involved nor, still less, punishment or vengeance upon them is required. The prophet must simply do his work: go where God sends him, say what He has instructed him to say, and leave the rest to Him.

But there are people around who hinder Jeremiah from doing God's work. This is an objective reality. One may treat the people who hinder him in any way one likes, but objectively they are enemies of God. This is not vindictiveness and not hatred; it is a simple statement of an obvious fact. It would be foolish to ignore the obvious, and the prophet does not try to do so: he turns to God for resolution of the situation.

His words about enemies are not evidence of hatred or a desire for vengeance in the human sense in which they are often interpreted. For God's vengeance is not like human vengeance, just as God's punishment is not human punishment. Human punishment is a sanction for violating a norm; human vengeance is evidence of triumph over an enemy. God's punishment, however, is only the triumph of His love over human sinfulness and the pain caused by sin that seeks to prevent this triumph; God's vengeance is the triumph of His will over those who oppose it and the fulfillment of His plans despite His opponents. It is not a desire to humiliate or suppress an enemy for the sake of His own triumph: God has no need to affirm Himself at the expense of a defeated opponent. He simply puts everything in its place, including those who oppose Him.

But God does not want their destruction. He wants these people to turn and receive the fullness of life that He can give them. And this desire of His becomes vengeance only for those who reject it. But that is no longer God's vengeance - it is a human choice.