Vessel & Altar

"The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened." - Matthew 13:33

The woman in this parable is the only person doing anything. She takes the yeast and mixes it into the dough, and then the leavening happens - invisibly, from the inside, over time - until the whole batch has risen. She does not watch it happen. She does not manage it. She does her part and the yeast does the rest.

Today the Church remembers Joachim and Anne, the parents of Mary. Tradition says they were elderly and childless when Mary was born - people who had been waiting long enough that most would have stopped expecting. And then came the child who would become the Mother of God. The leavening worked through what looked, from the outside, like an ordinary household.

Many women know the yeast vocation well - the invisible work that leavens the whole batch without being credited for it. The daily faithfulness that holds a family's faith together. The prayer that no one sees. The conversation that plants something that grows for years. The cloth image in Jeremiah shows what happens when clinginess is lost. The yeast image shows what faithful clinginess produces over time in the people around you.

Sister, the work you are doing that no one is tracking is the yeast in the batch. Trust the leavening.

Name the invisible work you are doing right now - the faithfulness that no one is measuring or rewarding. Hold it before God today not as a complaint but as an offering. Then ask: is there one woman in your life whose yeast work you have never named to her? Tell her this week.

Lord, let me be the woman with the yeast - doing my part and trusting you with the leavening. Let the invisible work be real and let me not need it to be seen. Precious Blood of Jesus, save us. Amen.