Parable of the Leaven

The parable describes what happens when a woman adds leaven (old, fermented dough,[2] usually containing lactobacillus and yeast) to a large quantity of flour (about 8+1⁄2 gallons or 38 litres[3]).

"[6] The large quantity of flour may hint at a planned festive occasion, since the bread produced could feed a hundred people.

By the three measures He intends either those three things in man, with the whole heart, with the whole soul, with the whole mind; or the three degrees of fruitfulness, the hundred-fold, the sixty-fold, the thirty-fold, or those three kinds of men, Noe, Daniel, and Job.

"[11] Rabanus Maurus: "He says, Until the whole was leavened, because that love implanted in our mind ought to grow until it changes the whole soul into its own perfection; which is begun here, but is completed hereafter.

The 3 - Father, son, and Holy spirit help to hide us, to feed us...until we have grown to our full potential and understanding in the Kingdom -- usually 3 1/2 years.

She takes the leaven, that is, the understanding of the Scriptures, and hides it in three measures of meal, that the three, spirit, soul, and body, may be brought into one, and may not differ among themselves.

I will further mention an interpretation of some; that the woman is the Church, who has mingled the faith of man in three measures of meal, namely, belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; which when it has fermented into one lump, brings us not to a threefold God, but to the knowledge of one Divinity.

[12] But I hardly think that the reason of the thing will allow this interpretation; for though these three nations have indeed been called, yet in them Christ is shown and not hidden, and in so great a multitude of unbelievers the whole cannot be said to be leavened.