Jesus gave his disciples and us all a basic teaching in the parables he preached about the kingdom of God which declare and reveal to us the nature of the historical and spiritual development proper to the Church according the her Founder's plan.

Jesus says (Mk 4,26-29) that the kingdom of God 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.

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"(Mt 13,31-32).

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).

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. Therefore, Jesus urges everyone to pray, "Your kingdom come" (cf. Mt 6,10; Lk 11,2), which is one of the first petitions of the Pater noster.

The parable in Mt 13,24-30, explains the coexistence and the frequent mingling of good and evil in the world, in our lives and in the very history of the Church.

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.

Expressions of the truths taught by Jesus 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, found echoes in the other writings of the Apostles.

"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).