By what authority are you doing these things?

MONDAY 16 DECEMBER (Mt 21,23-27)

True authority is always a creator of truth and therefore cannot come except from God. Every authority of omnipotence comes from God. He alone is the Almighty and the Holy One. The true miracle is the work of God through man, who participates in his eternal power. The authority to purify the cult and to teach the true way of salvation, comes from the Holy Spirit. Every man lives in a profound spiritual blindness. If a man with his word opens the eyes of the spirit to the blind, his authority necessarily comes from God. But Jesus had manifested this divine origin of all his authority since the beginning of the synagogue: “He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the Sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing” ” (Lk 4,16-21). This is very pure authority that comes only from God.

That the authority of Jesus is from God, all his great signs, miracles and wonders attest it. No man with the mere word can give sight to a blind man and no one can raise a dead man who has been lying in his grave for four days by now. No one can wash away leprosy and no one can command the wind and the sea. The miracles of Jesus are so real signs that they cannot be doubted in any way and neither can they be attributed to a human authority of science or of another discovery of our technique. Like the magicians of Egypt, we are called to confess that Jesus acts with the finger of God, that is, with his authority. But Jesus cannot tell the truth to those who are questioning him. His hour has not come yet and he must beware of telling them the divine origin of the authority with which he is acting. He promises to reveal them the origin, if they had told him what the origin of John’s baptism was, whether from heaven or from men? With two calculations, the people present say they do not know. They lie. They do not tell the truth to Jesus. They know that John is a prophet of the living God. However, it was not convenient for them to say the origin of his baptism. Currently not for Jesus is convenient to explicitly say the origin of his authority. He does not deny his divine origin. He says he won’t reveal it. They do not say it out of ignorance. He does not say it for science, most pure knowledge. Jesus knows he is from eternal light, but he does not reveal it.

When he 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.

From this evangelical pericope we must learn two very high truths. Whoever is in charge of discernment in the community is obliged to separate good from evil, what comes from God from what comes from men, with a very clear cut. What is of God is of God. What is of men is of men. Instead, Scribes, Pharisees, chief priests and elders of the people work exclusively for them. With John the Baptist they say they do not know. He is by now dead and can do no harm. In a few days they will accuse Jesus of blasphemy because he revealed his truth. They deny out of interest. Out of interest, they declare the most pure truth of Christ the Lord blasphemy.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints arrange that the ministers of truth are always for the truth.