The paradox of authority

The concept of authority is undoubtedly one of the most misunderstood in human living, not excluding among those who in the Church exercise authority in Christ's name.

For many, exercising authority means 'imposing' one's will on others: making them do what you want rather than helping them to do what is right and beneficial for them. For others authority is 'using' others for the sake of one's own advancement and holding them as mere objects rather than persons.

In today's Gospel we read how the disciples were surprised by the way Jesus exercised his authority. "What can this be?", they asked one another... "See how he has authority to lay his commands even on the unclean spirits and they obey him!"

Christ's authority meant freedom from ignorance and deceit. It meant a 'giving of self' to others, using one's capabilities for the benefit of others, especially of those who need help. It meant service rather than being served. The entire four Gospels are nothing less that a description of the way in which Jesus exercised his authority, or rather of the way in which He constantly was out to serve others.

For a Christian, authority means service. It is the charisma which the person exercising authority should have, not to make others do what he wants, but to help others accomplish what they "should" want, i.e. what is truly good for them.

In a few words, the Christian equivalent of authority is service. That is the way Jesus exercised his authority over his disciples, a way which was inspired by selfless love and which should still be the mark of all those in the Church who exercise authority in each of its manifold different strata: the Pope over the entire Church, the bishops over their dioceses, the parish priests over their local communities, and finally parents over their children.

No wonder that the crowd listening to him in the synagogue of Capharnaum, where he started his preaching, were amazed by his teaching, for he sat there, as we read in today's Gosepl, teaching like one "having authority, not like the Scribes". On that occasion the people gathered at the synagogue had been accustomed to another kind of authority, which only demanded blind obedience to the most minute prescriptions of the law, and therefore blind subservience to those in authority.

Terrible abuses of authority have been part and parcel of world history. The number of such abuses is known to God alone. Most of the wars, especially in the 20th century, were both the result of such abuses and the causes of fresh abuses eventually leading to more and more bloodshed and inhuman behaviour. The Church herself, as an organisation made up of human beings, was unfortunately not quite alien to such abuses of power in the name of authority.

At the beginning of this millennium John Paul II has not hesitated to ask forgiveness for the abuses of authority within the Church and by the Church. If so many men and women have suffered for the Church, many others have suffered because of actions and decisions of its authority.

The Church is able to admit that, as the Gospel says, those in authority will always be subjected to the temptation of misusing it. Hence the need for us all, including those occupying high places in the Church, to keep in mind that "to rule is to serve, and to serve is to rule" in God's eyes.