Note that in this parable Jesus clearly says, “I am the Good Shepherd.” This is not something we wonder about. It is something we proclaim because He did. If we ask, after reading the Scripture, who the Good Shepherd is, and the child does not answer, we can (and should!) provide this answer - Jesus - because this is a truth of the Scripture revealed explicitly by Jesus Himself. We can read directly from God's Word to the child to answer this question. Similarly, if we ask the child what makes the Good Shepherd so good and he says that the Shepherd is actually bad, we again return to the Scripture passage which clearly lists "good" as an attribute of this Shepherd. Once more, the Scripture passage itself gives us the boundaries for our pondering. On the other hand, if we ask the children who the sheep might be, we do not give an answer even if they have no response. The answer to this question is not clearly defined in the text of this parable and to give this information would be to speed that child, before he is ready, to the end of the path, a journey which is for God and the child alone.
Here are a few of the sources which give us the foundation for proclaiming this truth to the children:
- Scripture. "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink" (John 6:54).
- The Liturgy: Through gesture we see this truth proclaimed each time the priest, after the words of consecration, "genuflects in adoration," as prescribed in the Roman Missal. While the Eucharist may still look like bread and wine, the priest would only genuflect before God Himself. In one example of a verbal prayer which proclaims this same truth we hear, in the Prayer after Communion on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ or Corpus Christi: "Grant, O Lord, we pray that we may delight for all eternity in that share in your divine life, which is foreshadowed in the present age by our reception of your precious Body and Blood."
- The Magisterium. CCC #1413 states, "Under the consecrated species of bread and wine Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial manner; his Body and his Blood, with his soul and his divinity.".
Guided by Scripture, the Liturgy, and the Magisterium we can have confidence in guiding the children and helping to keep them on the path of truth. We have so many beautiful resources at our disposal that help us to provide a space in which the children may freely ponder and wonder, safe on the path, trusting us to remind them of the guide-rails and even, when needed, allowing us to pull them back up out of the ditch onto the pathway of truth!