- from CatholicCulture.org
At its most basic level, a parable is a story. Jesus was very fond of using parables to teach about the Kingdom of God for a couple of reasons. By using parables, He was able to take a subject his audience had no experience with and relate it to something they did have experience with. This is the beauty of parables. They are able to take complex subjects and make them easier to understand. But more than that, by using a story to explain his teachings, Jesus was able to make them more memorable. We are much better at recalling and retelling a story than we are at remembering individual facts. However, when we recall the story, we then recall the message behind the story. Parables, then, become a tool to both make the difficult easier to understand and to make those difficult to understand things easier to remember.