The growth of the kingdom is God’s work, but it also depends on the receptivity and free will of those to whom the Gospel is preached

In recent months the catechesis which the Holy Father gives each Wednesday at the General Audience has been about the Church. In the talk on 25 September the Pope continues to discuss the Church as it appears in Christ's parables about the growth of the kingdom of God. Here is the Holy Father's teaching, which was given in Italian.

1. As we said in the preceding catechesis, it is not possible to understand the origin of the Church without considering everything which Jesus preached and did (cf. Acts 1:1). On this theme precisely he gave his disciples and us all a basic teaching in the parables he preached about the kingdom of God. Among these parables, the ones which declare and reveal to us the nature of the historical and spiritual development which is proper to the Church according to her Founder's plan have particular importance.

2. Jesus says: "This is how it is with the kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come" (Mk 4:26-29). The kingdom of God, then, grows here on earth in human history by virtue of an initial seed, i.e., a foundation which comes from God and a mysterious work of God himself, which the Church continues to cultivate through the centuries. In God's activity for the kingdom, the "sickle" of sacrifice is also present: the development of the kingdom does not occur without suffering. This is the meaning of the parable recorded in Mark's Gospel.

3. We find the same idea in other parables, too, especially in those collected in Matthew's text (13:3-50). "The kingdom of heaven", we read in this Gospel, "is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the 'birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches' " (Mt 13:31-32). This is the growth of the kingdom in an "extensive" sense.

Another parable, however, shows the kingdom's growth in an "intensive" or qualitative sense, comparing it to "yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened" (Mt 13:33).

4. In the parable of the sower and the seed, the growth of the kingdom of God certainly appears as the result of the sower's work, but the seed produces a harvest in relation to the soil and climatic conditions: "a hundred or sixty or thirty-fold" (Mt 13:8). The soil signifies a person's interior receptivity. According to Jesus, then, the growth of the kingdom of God is also conditioned by man. Human free will is responsible for this growth. Therefore, Jesus urges everyone to pray: "Your kingdom come" (cf. Mt 6:10; Lk 11:2): it is one of the first petitions of the Pater noster.

5. One of the parables told by Jesus about the growth of the kingdom of God on earth reveals to us in a very realistic way the type of struggle which the kingdom entails, due to the presence and action of an "enemy", who "sowed weeds all through the wheat". Jesus says that "when the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well". The slaves of the householder wanted to pull them up, but the householder does not allow them to do this: "No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, 'First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn' " (Mt 13:24-30). This parable explains the co-existence and the frequent mingling of good and evil in the world, in our lives and in the very history of the Church. Jesus teaches us to see these things with Christian realism and to handle every problem with clear principles, but also with prudence and patience. This presupposes a transcendent vision of history, in which one knows that everything belongs to God and every final result is the work of his Providence. However, the final destiny—in its eschatological dimension— of the good and bad is not hidden: it is symbolized by the gathering of the wheat into the barn and the burning of the weeds.

6. Jesus himself gives an explanation of the parable of the seed at the request of his disciples (cf. Mt 13:36-43). Both the temporal and the eschatological dimensions of God's kingdom appear in his words.

He says to his own: "The mystery of the kingdom of God has been granted to you" (Mk 4:11). He instructs them in this mystery and, at the same time, by his words and actions "he confers a kingdom on them, just as the Father has conferred one on him [the Son]" (cf. Lk 22:29). This conferral is taken up again after his resurrection: we read in the Acts of the Apostles that "he appeared to them during forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God" (cf. Acts 1:3), up to the day when he "was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God" (Mk 16:19). These were the last instructions and arrangements given to the Apostles about what they were to do after the ascension and Pentecost in order to give a concrete beginning to the kingdom of God at the Church's birth.

7. The words addressed to91 Peter at Caesarea Philippi are also situated within the context of his preaching about the kingdom. He says to Peter: "I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 16:19), immediately after having called him the rock, on which he would build his Church. This Church will be invincible in regard to the "gates of hell" (cf. Mt 16:18). It is a promise which was expressed at the time by a future tense verb, "I will build", because the definitive establishment of the kingdom of God in this world was to be accomplished by the sacrifice of the cross and the victory of the resurrection. Afterwards, Peter and the other Apostles will be intensely aware of their call to "announce the praises of him who called them out of darkness into his wonderful light" (cf. 1 Pt 2:9). At the same time, all of them will also be aware of the truth which appears in the parable of the sower, i.e., that "neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who causes the growth", as St Paul will write (1 Cor 3:7).

8. The author of Revelation expresses this same awareness of the kingdom when he refers to the hymn addressed to the Lamb: "You were slain and with your blood you purchased for God those from every tribe and tongue, people and nation. You made them a kingdom and priests for our God" (Rv 5:9-10). The Apostle Peter explains that they were appointed to "offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (cf. 1 Pt 2:5). These are all expressions of the truths taught by Jesus which, in the parables about the sower and the seed, the growth of the wheat and the weeds, the mustard seed which is sown and then becomes a large bush, speak of the kingdom of God, which through the action of the Spirit grows in souls by the vital force coming from his death and resurrection: a kingdom which continues to grow until the time foreseen by God himself.

9. "Then comes the end", St Paul proclaims, "when he [Christ] hands over the kingdom to his God and Father, when he has destroyed every sovereignty and every authority and power" (1 Cor 15:24). "When everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all" (1 Cor 15:28).

The Church, from beginning to end, is situated within this marvellous eschatological perspective of God's kingdom, and here her history unfolds from the first day to the last.