The significance and depth of Christ’s parables

What are the parables of Christ? It’s a deceptively simple question, in part because the two dozen or so parables found in the Synoptic Gospels — the Fourth Gospel contains none — are deceptively simple. They are so apparently simple it is easy to think anyone could have produced them. But as Father George William Rutler notes in “Hints of Heaven: The Parables of Christ and What They Mean for You,” an exquisite collection of reflections, “The only proof I have of their literary superiority is that no one has ever been able to match them.” He compares them to a man who viewed a great painting and says, “I can do that” and then renders a greeting card.

A parable, Father Rutler notes, might be defined as “a similitude employing a brief narrative in order to teach a spiritual lesson”; he also notes that such a definition is both accurate and unhelpful. The parables, traditionally totaled as 24 in number, are utterly unique. They are unlike other Eastern parables in eschewing exotic or exaggerating qualities; they are “what Jesus said they are: hints of heaven.” This echoes what the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Through his parables [Christ] invites people to the feast of the kingdom, but he also asks for a radical choice: to gain the kingdom, one must give everything” (No. 546).

The parables are thus invitations, but they never are loud or gaudy. “Because the glory of heaven is too great for us to bear just now,” writes Father Rutler, “Christ uses parables as delicate and veiled indications of our true homeland.” We must keep in mind that Jesus uttered parables during his public ministry, prior to his resurrection; he faced the profound challenge of speaking of the kingdom to people who struggled to accept that a humble and suffering Messiah could and would usher in the reign of God.

Even we, on the other side of the Resurrection, often struggle to see and to believe. It requires humility and childlike faith, and that can be as hard for us as it was for the Pharisees, who perceived that many of the parables were about them (cf. Mt 25:44-46) — and so sought to silence Christ.

There are many different ways to approach the parables, from dense academic dissections (which can lose sight of the bigger picture of salvation) to pious devotionals (which often overlook the gritty directness involved). Father Rutler’s approach is a masterful combination of spiritual insight, theological erudition and literary beauty.

There is no shallowness or equivocation in this book. Writing of the famous parable of the Good Samaritan, Father Rutler observes that “there is a numbing tendency to trivialize things beloved, and this parable is among the most beloved of them all. ... The story should move the heart to good works, but if that is all it does, it is not understood.” Christ the High Priest, in telling of the priest who ignores the beaten traveler, is “hymning the glory of priestliness even as he disdains stingy clerisy.” Much of the corruption in the Church today, Father Rutler flatly states, “stems from clerical self-regard,” which can reveal itself in the most holy of activities: “Buffoonery in the sacred liturgy is a particularly tasteless and shocking form of clerical triumphalism,” he writes.

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Title: “Hints of Heaven: The Parables of Christ and What They Mean for You” Author: Father George William Rutler Publisher: Sophia Institute Press Price: $14.95

The parables are not just teachings of Christ, but are encounters with the Savior meant to spur us on in holiness, mercy and love. And, in the end, “there will be no need for any parables if we should be allowed to see the Master face-to-face.”

The Rev. George William Rutler

Father Rutler was ordained to the diaconate in Rome by His Eminence William Cardinal Baum in 1980 and received priestly ordination in St. Patrick's Cathedral at the hands of His Eminence Terence Cardinal Cooke in 1981. He served as Associate Pastor of St. Joseph's in Bronxville; Our Lady of Victory in the Wall Street area; and St. Agnes, in Manhattan. He was a university chaplain for the Archdiocese, and also chaplain to a general hospital and a psychiatric hospital. For ten years he was also National Chaplain of Legatus, the organization of Catholic business leaders and their families, engaged in spiritual formation and evangelization. A board member of several schools and colleges, he is Chaplain of the New York Guild of Catholic Lawyers, Regional Spiritual Director of the Legion of Mary (New York and northern New Jersey) and has long been associated with the Missionaries of Charity, and other religious orders, as a retreat master. Since 1988 his weekly television program has been broadcast worldwide on EWTN. Father Rutler has lectured and given retreats in many nations, frequently in Ireland and Australia. Cardinal Egan appointed him Pastor of the Church of Our Saviour, effective September 17, 2001.

Born in 1945 and reared in the Episcopal tradition in New Jersey and New York, Father Rutler was an Episcopal priest for nine years, and the youngest Episcopal rector in the country when he headed the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, Pennsylvania. He was received into the Catholic Church in 1979 and was sent to the North American College in Rome for seminary studies. His parents, Adolphe and Dorothy, both now deceased, were received into the Church in 1982 by Cardinal Cooke. Father Rutler graduated from Dartmouth, where he was a Rufus Choate Scholar, and took advanced degrees at the Johns Hopkins University and the General Theological Seminary. He holds several degrees from the Gregorian and Angelicum Universities in Rome, including the Pontifical Doctorate in Sacred Theology, and studied at the Institut Catholique in Paris. In England, in 1988, the University of Oxford awarded him the degree Master of Studies. From 1987 to 1988 he was regular preacher to the students, faculty, and townspeople of Oxford. Thomas More College and Christendom College awarded himhonorary doctorates, and in 1996 Governor George W. Bush made him an Honorary Texan. For his help at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 he was honored by the City Council of New York and was made an honorary firefighter by the City of Dallas. He is a knight of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre, and chaplain of the St. Andrew's Society of the State of New York, the Robert Burns Society of the City of New York, and the West Point Society of New York.

Father Rutler has made documentary films in the United States and England, contributes to numerous scholarly and popular journals and has published 16 books on theology, history, cultural issues, and the lives of the saints, and also one book on sports, as a member of the U.S. Squash Racquets Association.

But Jesus Himself explained why He spoke to the multitudes in parables.

The key in Fr. Rutler's point is here:

“Christ uses parables as delicate and veiled indications of our true homeland.” We must keep in mind that Jesus uttered parables during his public ministry, prior to his resurrection; he faced the profound challenge of speaking of the kingdom to people who struggled to accept that a humble and suffering Messiah could and would usher in the reign of God.

Which is confirmed by 1 Corinthians 2:9 - "However, as it is written: "What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived" -- the things God has prepared for those who love him--"

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