There’s Authority and There’s Authority – Fr. Tom McKenna

by | Aug 8, 2015 | Formation, Reflections | 4 comments

McKenna copped

In Matthew’s 10th chapter, Jesus calls the disciples together and, as it says, “gives them authority” over the unclean spirits and diseases and illnesses. And by authority, Matthew means the power Jesus himself has been exercising, Jesus’ own power given Him by the Father and now given by Him to the disciples.

I’m guessing that for a disciple, this must’ve been pretty heady stuff – God’s power now working through little old me. And of course, we know it didn’t translate all that simply inasmuch as the disciples so misunderstood Jesus and His kind of power, His kind of authority – and thereby tripped up, sometimes spectacularly, in the use of that power.

And so, their desire to call down it down to best their opponents, their missing its use for service and not for lording it over, their fears and confusions and eventually desertions. But then, having moved through all the tumultuous events leading up to Pentecost, this power starts once again to flow through them. And Peter and the others do go out and heal and cast out demons.

So there’s a way in which we can say of this authority, that “there’s authority and there’s authority.” There’s the kind that’s assigned from the outside – and there’s a certain reality to this. And then there’s the kind that over time and circumstances has sunken down into the disciples’ souls and starts to come up from the inside – the kind that’s not only imposed or applied or given, as much as it’s rooted.

One author writes about a contrast between the kind of spiritual authority he saw in a newly ordained priest and the kind he saw (and felt) in the words and manner of a much older man. He recalled sitting in a spiritual directors group and listening to this younger man expound on prayer and God’s presence. He was very articulate about praying, its stages, especially the finer points of its contemplative phase. But even though the priest was clear and sincere, there was something missing. His words were surfacy, unanchored, as if he were reading from some notes he had memorized. Were the words true? Yes. Were they real? Not so much.

And then there was this older participant who even though he didn’t say much, somehow reached a deeper chord in what he said and how he said it.

Did the young one have authority? Yes, in a manner of speaking, but it was coming more from his role and his recent degrees. Did the older one have authority? Yes, but of a different kind, a more silent kind, one that had resonance, that reverberated from someplace inside him so that you sensed its solidity and grounding.

“There was authority — and there was authority.” Both were given, but one was more laid on the surface and the other sounded up from the inside.

A favorite movie of mine is True Confessions, a story about two  brothers (Robert Duval and Robert DiNiro), one a rough and tumble cop and the other a young priest on the rise, so to speak — the bishop’s secretary, Roman educated and already a Monsignor, a comer. The priest is a good man, intelligent, making sense and sincere. And even though the cop moves in a much more compromising world, he is good too.

A scandal occurs in the diocese. The policeman is involved in breaking it; the priest is implicated, takes the fall for it, and is exiled out to some desert parish where he works for years. At the end of the movie the now-old cop is comes to visit his aging brother. But you notice the change in the priest. There’s another depth to him now. He’s quieter and less sure, but is very in touch with himself and the poor Native Americans of his parish. He’s got a new gravitas.

Walking together, the cop apologizes to brother for being part of his fall from grace, condemning him to this godforsaken corner of the diocese. The priest looks at him and says, “banish me; you saved me.”

The point: He had a certain authority in the beginning; now he’s got another kind, more rooted and arising more from his insides than from his title and Roman degrees.

So Jesus gives the disciples and all subsequent leaders in the Church – and all of us — His authority. But there’s his authority and there’s his authority. It’s when that authority gets rooted, planted, that the second kind comes through.

It’s when by walking Jesus’ way, praying His prayer, moving through his lights and darknesses, serving His poor, standing in the space of His beatitudes, washing the feet of others, that the fuller depth and breadth and height of this authority comes through.


Tags: McKenna

4 Comments

  1. Aidan Rooney

    Tom, this is super. Thanks!

  2. Pat Collins

    Interesting … Differentiation between surfacy authority and deep rooted authority…deep rooted conviction

  3. Ross

    Thanks, Tom, for a whole lot of things. But today, thank you not just for your knowledge, but also and especially for your wisdom.

  4. Hoa Le

    Thanks so much, Father!

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