By whose authority?

Monday’s Gospel reading, and this phrase, “By whose authority?” remains in my mind days later. There’s a world hidden in that phrase. Jesus was approached in the Temple while he was teaching by the Elders and chief priests.

When Jesus had come into the temple area,
the chief priests and the elders of the people approached him
as he was teaching and said,
“By what authority are you doing these things?
And who gave you this authority?”
Jesus said to them in reply,
“I shall ask you one question, and if you answer it for me,
then I shall tell you by what authority I do these things.
Where was John’s baptism from?
Was it of heavenly or of human origin?”
They discussed this among themselves and said,
“If we say ‘Of heavenly origin,’ he will say to us,
‘Then why did you not believe him?’
But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we fear the crowd,
for they all regard John as a prophet.”
So they said to Jesus in reply, “We do not know.”
He himself said to them,
“Neither shall I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

Matthew 21 23-27

I thought as I listened, That’s how it starts.

We lose our childlike trust in our parents, and then, falling like dominoes, all figures of authority: ministers, priests, police…

At least, that’s how it was with me. I’d “grown up.” At the ripe old age of seventeen, I could and did pass judgment on our Episcopalian priest’s homosexuality when it was discovered. And the parishioners who left when a black family began attending St. John’s Episcopal Church.

“By what authority are you doing these things?
And who gave you this authority?”

And so I walked away from God and all that smacked of religion.

But when we decide God has no authority over us, we start searching earnestly for someone or something to give ourselves to.

The four stumbling blocks to truth:

• The influence of fragile or unworthy authority
• Custom
• The imperfection of undisciplined senses
• Concealment of ignorance by ostentation of seeming wisdom.

For more years than I can count, these beautifully calligraphed four stumbling blocks to truth have been displayed prominently in a simple bronze frame, protected by glass, a graduation gift from Kathy. My friend Kathy and I memorized this list, utilizing one or more of them during our frequent philosophical discussions. And then laughing appreciatively at the one who nailed the problem by pointing out the flaw in reasoning. We were stunned at the universality with which one or more of the stumbling blocks nailed an error in our logic.

We were hungry for knowledge, not just knowledge, we wanted wisdom, impossibly young, considered ourselves atheists and were studying at Dominican College in Houston while working in the cardiac surgical ICU at St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston. Our friendship happened by default. She was from New York, I from Boston. Our accents, personalities, and ambition were jarring when compared with those of the native Texas nurses we worked with- we stood out.

Finding the Narrow Path

Kathy had been brought up as a Catholic, I as an Episcopalian.

We’d each rejected our religions for similar reasons. The irony of our attraction to the education offered at the orthodox Dominican College was not lost on us. In fact, looking back through the blurry lens of so many years, I suspect that this shared yearning for wisdom was the beginning of our return to the God we had walked away from.

Carl Sandburg’s only novel, Remembrance Rock, was assigned in our English class. Kathy and I loved the book primarily because of those four stumbling blocks to truth. I cried when she presented her graduation gift, which was a calligraphy of them. She was a talented artist, so gifted that the college wanted to send her to Florence to study her art. But she refused the scholarship. Afraid, I believe, that the carefully assembled walls of her unbelief would topple.

Our yearning for God isn’t like a desire for a new car, better job, or even for a partner to share our life with. It’s coded into our very being.

The lure of the journey is an ancient one. Whether striking out to head toward an unexplored west, risking a small fleet of boats to see what is on the other side of the earth or sending spaceships into the sky to discover other life in the majestic universe, the need to explore can be as fierce as a craving.

But we learn, finally, that the riskiest, the most searing trip is the one taken when we at long last, stop. Whether through exhaustion or merely empty wallets, endless travel reveals more or less, more of the same. Even for those committed to the extremes, just how many mountains can be climbed before we can say enough?

And so it begins

Long ago, my shock at my serious consideration of the Catholic religion resulted in a conversation with a man who was a spiritual director. It was a term I had never before encountered, but this wise man generously listened to my story. And my fear that this impulse to become Catholic wasn’t real. After so many years of searching, how could I trust this?

When he told me that the journey was always a masculine inclination, and that the decision to stop and call a place home was always a feminine one, I wanted to feel baffled by his observation. I needed to resist and discard it, but I knew what he said was the truth.

My wise mentor explained a search I had been conducting for years.  The exploration had consisted of numerous Christian and a few non-Christian denominations, and most recently, trips to Delphi, Greece, and Kyoto, Japan. Although I did not use these words,  it was a search for the sacred. I felt that I had found what I’d been looking for and was terrified. And also an answer to the why of recent major upheavals in my personal and professional life, albeit a frightening one.

Reflecting on the masculine nature of journeys, I understood the fear that long-ago me felt, the panic at the fact that it was over. I had found what I had been searching for. And the alarm of commitment, of stability rang as a three-alarm tone. Perversely, the ‘finding‘ can be far more frightening than the search.

For those of us who have walked away, conversion takes everything we have. And asks for more.

And more again.

….Christ comes
at other times with garments dyed in blood, but now
he comes to us in all serenity and peace, and he bids
us rejoice in him and to love one another. This is not
a time for gloom, or jealousy, or care, or indulgence,
or excess, or license, not for quarreling and jealousy,
as the Apostle says (Rom 13:13), but for putting on the
Lord Jesus Christ….May each Christmas, as it comes, find us more and
more like him, who at this time became a little child for
our sake, more humble, more holy, more affectionate,
more resigned, more happy, more full of God.

Saint John Henry Newman