29th Sunday of the Year, B

            Hardly a day goes by that we don’t read in the newspapers or hear on the TV news some new abuse of a position of authority.  Tragic stories of parents who injure or mistreat their children; public figures who use their position to illegally accumulate wealth and influence; government agencies, meant to serve, arrogating to themselves powers undreamed of by some of history’s most absolute rulers.  And so on.  Still, with all this abuse around us, there are few who would call themselves anarchists, that is, those who are against all organized civil authority.  We seem, for the most part, to discern the continuing need for authority even in the face of abuse and misuse.  We just can’t get along socially and politically without authority.

            Nor can the Church.  And even there, though, abuses of authority have occurred and do occur.   During the Renaissance very serious problems developed in the Church’s highest offices; and some of the Reformers thought it best to deny the need for these authorities, especially the Papacy.  Martin Luther railed against the corruptions in the papal office; and yet his answer seemed to be to eventually turn over most of the authority of the church to the state.  He saw that there must be some office of authority, and he looked to the German princes instead of the traditional centers of authority in the Church.  And so was laid the foundation of the great tragedy born out of Germany in our own past century, where one of the greatest, most devastating, abuses of authority has ever occurred in the whole history of the world.

            Sometimes hard to live with it, and impossible to live without it -- authority.  Authority in the Church too.  Abuses still happen.  I’ve heard laypeople speak of their priest as if he were just like any paid employee of the parish, a kind of hireling instead of a shepherd.  And I’ve heard of and seen things done by clerics to the laity that have caused me to blush with shame.  I heard not too long ago of a priest who arrogated to himself the power, the authority, to tell his own parishioners, with a tone of almost contempt, what they could not bring to their confession.  Of course, a second year seminarian would know that this is a veritable trouncing on the rights of God's people, rights theirs by the very fact of their baptism and guaranteed by the law of the Church.  Yet how easily, in a fit of personal crusading, does this supposed priest lose sight of who his people are and who he is.

            What did he lose sight of?  He -- as do most people on occasion -- lost sight of the truth that Christian authority and rank has nothing to do with that craving to sit on the right or the left hand of Christ Himself in His glory.  And this is the very thing that even the first followers of Jesus asked for -- the position of limelight, the place of prestige.  Jesus rebuked them by reminding them that this is the way of the world, whose great ones make their importance felt.  Not so with you:  “Anyone among you who aspires to greatness must serve the rest; whoever wants to rank first among you must serve the needs of all.”  And then here is the clincher.  Jesus is saying, you want to know what I am calling you to in the leadership of my Church, then look at me.  I, the Son of Man, have “not come to be served but to serve -- to give my life in ransom for the many.” 

            If you have ever been to a priest’s ordination, you would have seen this giving of one’s life for others symbolically played out as the deacon (the priest-to-be) prostrates himself on the floor toward the altar as all the people pray the litany of the Saints.  They pray that this priest, in his ordination, will live out what his vocation is -- to be configured to Jesus Christ, Priest and Servant, who gave His life a ransom for the many.  Death.  Configuration to Jesus even in His crucifixion. 

            But the priest -- and much more so, the Bishop -- is ordained to serve as a shepherd.  He is not as a democratically elected official whose job is simply to do the will of the majority.  He is a shepherd called upon to serve his flock by doing a shepherd’s job.  That’s why in the history of the Church, some of her greatest servant-bishops would not hesitate to speak out forcefully, even issuing orders so that he might carry out his obligations as a figure of authority.  I think of the example of the Pope of Stalin’s time.  When warned against antagonizing the Pope, Stalin is reported to have sneered, “How many legions has the Pope?”  Good question.  And the answer is that the Pope has none; he has none of the kind of authority Stalin and others like him craved and amassed to their own person.  But in our own time, even as statues of Stalin were being pulled down in the streets of Russia and eastern Europe, books are being written about how a rather frail elderly man in white, the Bishop of Rome, shepherd of all Christians throughout the world, fellow-laborer of Jesus, the servant of the servants of God -- how this man, with a moral authority incomprehensible to the worldly, helped oversee the demise of so much of what Stalin built with his rule of terror.  Dictators and their hateful regimes come and go; but the vicar of Christ and successor of Peter remains.  He remains not because any of the popes have been perfect -- some were far from that -- but because the papacy is the office founded by Christ through which He might continue to be our Shepherd, guiding us by authority and so granted us the greatest service of all. 

            Servanthood, after the example of Jesus, is the mark of Christian rank.  It is to be the mark and motive of all bishops, priests and deacons, of anyone who holds authority in the Church.  It is to be the guiding principle of Christian spouses and parents, the moderating influence toward generosity upon the employer and boss who are believers.  Servanthood is part and parcel of true Christian life.  It is not a sign of weakness but of a strength that refuses to stoop to grasping power for oneself.  No lime-lighting, no arrogance, no political maneuvering; rather, service.  Such are those who follow Christ, and such are they who will be seated with Him in glory.