What is Teaching with Authority?

 (Fr. Andrew’s homily for Sunday, January 28^th 2024)

“Jesus entered the synagogue and taught. The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:21-22). What is teaching with authority?

1.  Authority comes from author. To speak with authority is to speak as if you were the author of what you say. It is speaking with originality and freshness. It’s never boring. Teaching with authority does not mean that you cannot use other people’s ideas: it means that those ideas are so much your own, by study and reflection, that they are like “at home” with you. Other people’s ideas become so accustomed to being with you, within your heart, that those ideas come out from your mouth as from their own home.

2.  Jesus speaks with authority because, as the Son of God, he is the Author of all truth. He is the source from which all of the prophets and evangelists drew their message, He is even the rule and model according to which the whole of nature was designed by God. Jesus speaks with authority because he speaks about Himself, about what He knows and what He is, about what He has done and will do, about what He desires and what He hates. Nobody had ever spoken in this way. His words were omnipotent: they could illuminate minds and heal lepers, they could command the devil and forgive sins, they could calm storms and wipe out tears, they could raise the dead and destroy people’s fears. He was the Word of God speaking God’s word to us.

3.  We ourselves can speak with authority when we are made one with our message and, if our message is Jesus, when we are one with Him, at least in some sense. The opposite of speaking with authority is copying other people’s words. We copy other people’s words when we need to hide what is inside of us: when we need to hide our ignorance or when we need to hide our evil conscience and our sins. But even in these cases, I could speak with authority if I said that I am an ignorant, I could speak with authority if I wanted to confess my sins. But If I need to say something good, and that good is not inside of me, I need to borrow it from someone else. What I say will be good but it will not sound as my own, because it is not coming from inside but is copied from someone else. This is why our teaching sometimes is not effective. Because we are not yet made one with what we say.

Has it not happened to you that when you want to give a good advice to a young person you sound abstract, like reciting from a book, but when you talk about other people’s sins against you, you sound like an actor? How difficult is finding the words to apologize to people sometimes, but how easy is finding the words to accuse them! We are all teachers, in a way, we want it or not. Today’s gospel is an invitation to imitate the Teacher who spoke with authority because He spoke about Himself, about what He had in His heart.

4.  “But, father, I still have to teach my kids and I’d better not teach them what is in my own heart!” Acknowledging our own sins is the first step forward. Jesus was not a sinner but all other teachers are. We will never be good teachers if we do not speak with the humility of someone who knows his or her own weaknesses. Confessing our sins to the priest is sometimes a necessary further step, especially when we have committed a mortal sin. The desire of perfection is the third step. You may not yet be a saint, but if you sincerely want to be better, perfection is somehow already in your heart, at least as a goal. When a person is sincerely sorry for their sins and try to do better, their teaching is different because they love the good, even if sometimes they have a hard time to do it.

5.  There is one more thing. “Our deeds speak louder than our words”: how do our deeds teach with authority? When we act out of love and not out of fear. Acting with authority is doing the right thing freely and not because someone is watching. When you act freely, you are the true author of your actions. When you act out of fear, another person is the author of your actions. This is why it is so impressive to see someone doing the right thing at the risk of their lives, or at the risk of losing their reputation or their position. This is what we call a witness or, in Greek, a martyr: someone who teaches with the authority of his or her life.

May God help us to teach with authority, to become one with the truth we speak. May God’s word be planted deep into our hearts, and may it blossom and produce fruit in our daily lives. May we invite God’s Word, His Son, into our hearts, may we befriend Him so much that He may feel at home within us. Jesus feels home in humble hearts, hearts who acknowledge their sins. And may we then speak to the world. The world needs more than ever, not speakers, but witnesses, who speak in tongues of fire to the heart of the modern world.