With what authority does the Church teach? Or to put it in words we hear so frequently these days, “what right does the church have to tell me how to live my life?”
In this week’s Gospel Jesus preaches in the Capernaum synagogue “as one having authority.” He did not teach as the scribes did, He had no conventional religious authority. The scribes would speak only when what they said could be backed up by past wisdom. The scribes drew stale water from closed cisterns.
But the words of Jesus were a fresh spring, clear and powerful. Where did He get His authority? The listeners were amazed at His teaching, a new teaching. They did not dispute His words, so we know they realized He spoke the truth but in a way they had never heard before.
The authority of Jesus is the authority of God. To hear Jesus speak is to hear God speak. The unclean spirit knew this, and obeyed the simple commands of God, “Quiet! Come out of him.”
Jesus passed His authority on to His apostles, and they in turn passed this authority on to their successors, and so it continued all the way down to today, to our bishops. This is what we refer to as the Apostolic Succession. When the Church teaches faith and morals through her bishops, it is not the voice of men telling us how to live our lives; it is the voice of God, telling us how to live.
Pax Vobiscum
4th Sunday in Ordinary Time