“You have their attention.”
While serving as high school chaplain, I tried all sorts of ways to get the attention of the students. Not seldom, therefore, I would get very close to the line of propriety while speaking to them. On one occasion, however, I did cross that line 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 have to ask why you would have 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, “Rob, 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 sometimes, during that assignment, I myself would forget the inherent authority of the Catholic priesthood. That’s when I would force things.
I’m recalling 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 step out of our place in the hierarchical order of things do we resort to forceful language, or insults, or violence, or provocative imagery.
Authority itself possesses its own power of influence, like gravity, receiving its strength from 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 - are actually meant to save us from treating one another poorly. For example, it is the husband who forgets his authority over his wife who becomes abusive, the wife who forsakes her authority over her children who reduces them to objects, and the priest who is alienated from his priestly authority who acts desperately.
In this way, authority is designed to save us from trying too hard. When Jesus, for example, 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. It is the power of the authority we saw at work in Christ. It is the power of the Father himself.
The demons know they need only allure us away from the order of things to cause our lives to fall apart like a Jenga tower, and we are certainly suffering today under the burden of so much disorder, but the authority of the natural order is still in tact, and Our Lord is still with us. We know this and we experience it. This is why, even now, Christ has our attention. +
