Gift and Response: The Parable Method

 

Gift and Response is the essence of reality:  Reality of the Trinity, of the universe and of the nature of what it means to be human.

Catechesis of the Good Shepherd seeks to illuminate this very heart of reality.  With the older children six to twelve we reflect on the History of the Kingdom of God.  We see all of creation as a History of Gifts given to us by a loving God. 

The study of theology, philosophy and even to a great degree literature are disciplines relegated to the frivolous and insignificant in academia.  Ours is an age of progress, of Science.  If it can not be proven by a study of the natural world, it must not be real.  But this misses what the youngest child seems to grasp almost effortlessly.  Sophia Cavelletti in her search to proclaim the Good News to the youngest child sought a method which matched the mystery.  The mystery of reality is one of inexhaustible wonder but contains truth which can in fact be grasped by the human mind.  In Catechesis we call this the Parable Method.

With even the youngest child we contemplate the Kingdom of God as a Mustard Seed.  It is the smallest of seeds but grows into the biggest of bushes.  But in observation of the child, it is almost as if they see the growing of the seed as a secondary truth.  Where we the adult see the example of growth of the seed in the natural world with ease, we struggle to comprehend its deeper significance. The child sees the Kingdom grow in their hearts, in the world, outside of the world with an inner eye that somehow understands the seed is merely a tool to understand what is “really real” or as we would say of them, what is most essential.

But the seed is in fact not merely a metaphor.  It speaks to a reality in the natural world as well.  What makes the seed grow?  The older child will acknowledge its need to be planted, to be watered, to receive sunlight.  But do any of these things explain how a tiny seed holds within it all that will become a tree?  There is an unseen power which is contained in the seed.  To ask a scientist:  Where does this power come from will yield no answer.  To ask a child of three, they will tell you with a certainty so clear it makes you cry at your own lack of faith:  Ah, it is God!