| Where does authority abide?
There is a difference between Power and Authority. Not all power is authority. Authority comes from the Latin “Auctor”, the word for “Author”. To be an “authority” does not necessarily mean originator. It can apply to any person who knows well the issue, has made it her or his own.
We can turn to our Scriptural heritage for ananswer. .In Isaiah 22:19-23, God deposes the powerful Shebna from office and summons his own servant Eliakim to whom God hands over the kingdom's authority. In establishing Peter as the rock on which Christ proposes to build his Church, the very words used hearkens back to this reading from Isaiah: “When (Eliakim) opens, no one shall shut and when he shuts, no one shall open.” Romans 11:33-36 is a hymn to the authority of God. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgm ents and how unsearchable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor?”
Based in the authority of God, the Christian community strives to faithfully exercise that authority through laws, counsel, and action in behalf of people. At the same time, the community holds itself accountable to a higher authority, never overreaching itself and lording it over others. The authority of the Christian community is an authority of service.
Thus, though power can oppress, authority liberates. You can be sure that any person or any body claiming authority and using that prerogative to control and treat others unjustly has strayed from the source of authority and their sway is thereby rendered meaningless. This is thoroughly part of the Christian tradition. I imagine Joan of Arc standing up to the government claiming the greater authority of her “voices”. Or Francis standing naked in the town of Assisi, having cast off the trappings of riches and his father's house, claiming the authority of “sister” poverty. Or the recently canonized American, Juan Diego, standing before the powers of Church and state, with his simple mantilla filled with flowers and the imprint of the power of God.
Where, then, do we turn for authority? Do we turn to the powerful, to those who seem to have achieved success and riches, those trying to impress with their knowledge and acumen? Or do we turn to the poor, the simple, the child, the infirm? We sing in Psalm 13: “The Lord in exalted, yet the lowly he sees, and the proud he knows from afar.”
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