Christ Has Our Attention
While serving as high school chaplain, I tried all sorts of ways to get the attention of the students. Not seldom, unfortunately, I would try too hard while speaking to them. On one occasion, in fact, I crossed the line of propriety by sharing a story with them about something that happened to me while I was in college. I immediately regretted it, and wasn’t at all surprised to find the bishop in my office the following day.
“I know why you’re here,” I said to him, “and I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have shared that story with them.”
“Oh good,” he said. “I’m happy to hear that. But I do have to ask why you felt it necessary to tell them that story.”
“I was just trying to get their attention. I’m always trying to get their attention.”
And then he responded - and I’ll never forget what he said, “You are a Catholic priest. You have their attention.”
He was right, of course. I didn’t need to try so hard. The students were always struck by the fact that I had become a priest; it never got old to them. But sadly, sometimes, during that assignment, I myself would forget the inherent authority of the Catholic priesthood, and that’s when I would force things.
I recall this story as a way of illustrating a particular characteristic of authority, namely, that its divine purpose is precisely to save us from having to force things on any occasion. Only when we distrust our place in the hierarchical order of things do we resort to forceful or provocative language, insults, or violence.
Authority comes from God with its own power of influence, like gravity, compelling all things to conform to the natural law. In this sense, structures of authority written into the created order by God - although they are often blamed for the world’s problems - can actually save us from treating one another poorly. For example, the husband who knows his natural authority over his wife feels no need to control her. The mother unashamed of her authority over her children never reduces them to objects. And the priest who is not alienated from his priestly authority neither acts nor speaks desperately.
In this way, authority, rightly understood, can save us from having to try too hard. When Jesus, say, refers to the Kingdom of God as a mustard seed, or a bit of yeast, he is teaching of the inherent power that lies within the natural order, a power that needs no assistance from us. We see in the Gospels, for example, how Christ’s own power comes from the little, childlike trust he places in all the many ways that the authority of his Father is at work in the world, enabling him to say even to Pilate the politician, “You would have no power over me had it not been given to you from above.”
The demons know they need only allure us away from the natural order to cause our lives to fall apart, and we are certainly suffering today under the burden of much disorder, but the authority of the natural law remains, and Our Lord is still with us. We know this and we experience it. This is why, even now, Christ has our attention. +