The Lord Jesus Christ’s Teachings through parables.

On the Sower; on weeds; on the unseen growth of the seed; on the mustard seed; on fermentation; on treasures hidden in the field; on the precious pearl; on a dragnet, cast into the sea.

The word parable is made up of two Greek words: “paravoli” and “parimia.” In a literary translation, the word “parimia” means “short pronouncements that express the rules of life” (such for example, were the parables of Solomon); “paravoli” — is a story, containing a hidden meaning, that express a higher spiritual truth in metaphors, taken from everyday life. Correctly speaking, the Scripture’s parable is a paravoli. Parables, expounded in the 13^th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, and in parallel sections of the two synoptists, Mark and Luke. They were uttered by the Lord before such a multitude of people, that He was forced to enter a boat, so as to distance Himself from the besieging crowd, and then address the people standing on the banks of the Gennesaret lake (“sea”).

Saint Golden Tongue explains: “The Lord spoke in parables so as to make His words more expressive, to imprint them in the memories of the listeners and present the actual events visually.” The Lord’s parables are allegorical teachings, images and examples, taken from everyday life of the Jewish people and from surrounding nature.

To the question: “Why do you speak to them in parables?” the Lord responded: “Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it has not been given” (Mat. 13:10-11; Mark 4:10-11 and Luke 8:9-10). As future proclaimers of the Gospel, the Lord’s disciples — through an exceptional mental enlightenment — were given knowledge of Divine mysteries, even though not fully, as that came with the descent of the Holy Spirit. While the rest, not having this knowledge, were not ready to accept and understand these truths. This served as a reason for the moral coarseness and false depictions of the Messiah and His Kingdom — spread by the Scribes and Pharisees. Isaiah had prophesied this (6:9-10). If this truth was shown to the morally corroded and spiritually hardened people in its natural state, without adorning it with something that they understood, they would then see it without seeing it, and hear it, without hearing it. Only when the truth is adorned with a parabolic cover, coupled with well familiar subjects, does it become comprehensible for acceptance and understanding: not forcibly, but the coarsened thought, by itself, rises from the seeing to the unseen, from the outward aspect to the higher spiritual meaning.

In that the Lord spoke in parables, Saint Matthew sees as the fulfilment of Asaph’s prophecy: “I will open my mouth in a parable” (Psalm 77:2). Although Asaph was saying this about himself, being a prophet, he was acting as a symbol of the Messiah, which can be seen from the following words of the same verse: “I will utter dark sayings of old,” which can only be befitting to the Omniscient Messiah, and not to a mortal individual. The concealed mysteries of God’s Kingdom are of course, revealed only by God’s hypostatic Wisdom.