Luke 13:18

"To what should I compare it?"

Let us look more closely to find out to whom all these things pertain….
Inasmuch as Scripture says, And it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the sky dwelt in its branches, I think that this [signifies] the Lord Christ himself, who in being born a man was humbled like a seed and in ascending to heaven was exalted like a tree.
It is clear that Christ is a seed when he suffers and a tree when he rises.
He is a seed, I say when he endures hunger and a tree when he satisfies five thousand men with five loaves.
In the one he endures barrenness in his human condition, in the other he bestows repletion by his divinity. I would say that the Lord is a seed when he is beaten, scorned, and inveighed against, but a tree when he enlightens the blind raises the dead and forgives sins.
That he is a seed he himself says in the Gospel: Unless the grain of wheat, falling upon the earth, dies.
But when the Gospel says, that someone took and planted in his garden, who do we think that this person is who took a seed like a mustard seed and sowed it in his little garden? I think that he is the person to whom the Evangelist refers: But behold, Joseph, who was from Arimathea, approached Pilate and asked to bury the body of the Lord that had been taken down; and he took it and brought it to the place of burial, which had been made ready in a garden (cf. Lk 23:50-53; Jn 19:38-41)….
Joseph’s garden, then, was full of the fragrance of different flowers, but no such bud as this had ever been planted there…. Thus, when he buried the Savior in the tomb of his little garden, he laid him in the innermost parts of his soul.
But let us consider the branches of this tree. You will see that Peter is a branch, Paul is a branch, and all the apostles and martyrs of the Savior are branches. If anyone wishes to cling to them he must not drown beneath the waters of the world but rather, hiding in their shade, escape Gehenna’s heat, secure both from the storm of the diabolical tempest and from the fire of the burning judgment.

-Saint Maximus of Turin

Saint Maximus of Turin († 5th century) was the first bishop of Turin, Italy, and an outstanding biblical scholar and preacher.