Patristic A.D. 735
“Or our Lord here compares perfect faith to a grain of mustard seed, because it is lowly in appearance, but fervid in heart. But mystically by the mulberry tree, (whose fruit and branches are red with a blood-red colour,) is represented the Gospel of the cross, which, through the faith of the Apostles being uprooted by the word of preaching from the Jewish nation, in which it was kept as it were in the lineal stock, was removed and planted in the sea of the Gentiles.”
Catena Aurea: Gospel of Luke, as excerpted in the Catena Aurea on Luke 17:5-6
PD · J. H. Newman (Oxford, 1843) ↗