There is a prized item that most authorities would like in their box of tools: the perception, if not of divinity itself, at least of a divine ambassadorship. When I am speaking, God is speaking is a powerful warrant. Parents, princes and popes would all like such clout.

Claims to speak for the Divinity can’t be effectively asserted, however, they can only be granted. Parent, pope or king can give every imaginable reason why he should be viewed as infallibly expressing God’s will but only those who judge his claim reasonable and beneficial will grant him authority.

Social or physical strength may give a person who claims authority great power to enforce his will but it gives him no authority. One who forces others to do his will without communicating to them a truth which they recognize is a tyrant, not an authority.

But, some say, God gives authority. God always has power but God has no authority that is not recognized by creatures. It is astounding to realize that our Creator respects that. Even God’s authority exists within a relationship of freedom.

The point of this observation is not to change the attitudes of those who claim authority. The point is to examine our attitude towards authority.

Our choices of those who possess power over us are limited. Every school child learns that on the playground. Our choices about authority in our lives, however, are another matter entirely.

No one who believes in Jesus’ God questions God’s authority. That authority is first of all and ultimately rooted in the perception that God loves us. The authority of anyone who would speak for God depends on whether she or he reflects God’s love for us.

I judge your authority to be true because I judge you to be loving is the key equation we must make. If we find ourselves troubled at those who claim authority, it’s most likely because we simply do not experience that simple truth with them. If that’s so, we do well to be wary.

“I’m afraid; I’m simply afraid.” That’s how the young man summed up his feelings towards his girlfriend. “I like her. She’s a good person and lots of fun and we get along great. I just don’t know where she’s – where the whole thing is taking me and it scares me.”

I never found out how their relationship turned out. That’s campus ministry: a library of stories whose endings you never learn. Still, this one had a common but always important theme: fear.

If the core of Jesus’ revelation about God is the absolute love God has for every person, the biggest obstacle to experiencing as well as sharing that love is fear.

Why would the Creator of everything love me? What do I have to offer in return for love? What will love demand of me? Like the young man fearful of the demands his friend’s love might make on him, we all seem to have a fear of love – not just God’s love but of anyone’s love.

A long-married parishioner discussing how he and his wife had overcome their self-centeredness once told me, “We loved each other’s fears away. I don’t know exactly how. I think sometimes we just couldn’t do anything else.”

Thinking about his words many times, I realized that he was explaining something central not only to human relationships but at the core of God’s relationship with us as we’ve come to know it in Jesus. In Jesus, God loved or fears away.

When God loves away our fears, we’re freed to love away the fears of those around us. That’s when things begin to change. That’s when we begin to experience the world Jesus promised.

I often remember that elderly husband’s wisdom when I read of Jesus urging his disciples to forgive one another and enemies just as God forgives them.

“I don’t need your advice. I don’t need your criticism. I need your support and your help. If you can’t give me those, please leave.” The father of a disabled son spoke those words in a radio interview he gave about his friends’ reactions to his situation. His words struck me because they echoed those I’d heard a few weeks earlier from the political leader of a small, struggling nation.

Giving advice and criticism is easier than rolling up our sleeves and pitching in. Giving advice and criticism keeps us superior to the one in trouble. Wrestling directly with another’s problem means making the problem our own and experiencing our own weakness in its presence.

Too often our world asks us Christians for help only to receive advice and criticism instead. Standing outside of its pain we offer, “Let us explain to you why you are suffering. Let us tell you how you should have avoided your difficulty. We have the answers if you would simply listen to us.”

Too often, as well, our answers are based in ignorance. Too often they serve to justify our assumptions rather than lighten others’ burdens. Too often those in need tolerate our presumptuousness to obtain whatever benefit they can. They damp the flames of their resentment for a later time.

To give in the Spirit of Jesus is to give without strings. To help in the Spirit of Jesus is to enter into another’s problem so deeply that we live it from the perspective of the one seeking our aid.

If we understand Jesus as a human being who was God’s presence rather than God acting as though he were human, we know that he didn’t intervene as an outsider. From within the community he worked with and encouraged people to accomplish what, with God, they were capable of.

Jesus was never made himself better than we are. He was one of us in the struggle for the life God promises. That’s what the world asks of us.

Recently a friend told me of a kindness that the members of his family had performed for an acquaintance. “We did it because it was the kind of thing that our parents did and, so the story goes, their parents before them. I guess. It’s just who we are.”

Folks care about what their ancestors have done, not simply out of historical curiosity but because their ancestors form the foundations of their lives. Each builds on the efforts of those who preceded them. To value one’s ancestors is to value one’s self and one’s future.

When Matthew and Luke told the story of Jesus, they began by placing him within his ancestral past. Name after name, century after century they recounted those who made Jesus possible until, nourished by the dreams, faith and work of countless progenitors, he revealed God’s promise of human triumph.

Just as we do, Jesus stood on the shoulders of those who went before him. His promise was the fulfillment of the future they had longed for.

One of the pluses of belonging to a faith tradition is that it constantly reminds us that others have given us faith and that we hold it in trust for those who will follow. The work of faith is inseparable from the work of human history. It’s not about our private lives. Faith’s focus is the common advancement of humanity from its present widespread suffering and injustice to its inheritance of peace and dignity.

It would be nice if our family of faith consisted of perfect people orderly processing into a glowing future. Alas, the old saw, family: you can’t live with them, you can’t live without them, applies as much to the Church as to any other group.

It helps to remember that, without a doubt, we are someone else’s frustration just as certainly as they are ours. Anyone who thinks the journey to God’s Kingdom is smooth and harmonious has been breathing too much incense.

God creates the universe to evolve. The Spirit lives in the dream that drives the process. As much as we complain about Church society, as we do as well about our political and social societies, it’s where we’re challenged, sometimes gently sometimes harshly to become the people we can be.

One result of the current debacle facing Catholic teaching authority is the serious lessening of its power to present the core Catholic vision in a way others find believable.

At the heart of our understanding of God, ourselves, salvation and human destiny is the communal nature of life. In Catholic understanding, there is no survival, let alone fulfillment of the individual outside of the community. There isn’t any hope for the community that does not include the dignity and fulfillment of the individual. The economic, social and legal behavior of our society makes it obvious that, regardless of the fine speeches we make about our union, we’ve not embraced this perspective.

If the law doesn’t stop me from getting or doing it, I have a right to it is a common attitude. To one who’s absorbed the Spirit of Jesus this understanding is unworkable and destructive.

Is it any business of religion? Yes. The foundational importance of community to life is a tenet of our faith. If we are committed to our faith, we are committed to the health of the community – the entire community. It’s not a doctrine to believe; it’s a love to share.

We must work for a healthy community and we must speak about a healthy community. We must make the community’s welfare the touchstone of our behavior. We promote the common good in every way we can – by explaining, by convincing, by encouraging, most of all, by modeling our commitment to it.

But some would say it’s not my job as a layperson to influence public opinion or policy. That’s the work of the bishops and cardinals. They testify before congressional hearings. They give speeches. They hold the press conferences.

In America today, the most trusted and powerful voice for our faith, the most valued source for Jesus’ values is the honest, down-to-earth neighbor next door. It’s the reliable person in the next office. It’s the car-pooling dad and the school volunteer mom. It’s the friendly clerk at the store.

You are the voice of the Church today. Don’t be silent.

Ask any Christian school child what Easter is all about and you’ll get the confidant answer: That’s when Jesus rose from the dead. I’ve always wondered how Jesus would respond to that answer if he were the questioner. Given the kind of man he was, I imagine that he’d smile and say, “Very good” but he’d also whisper a quick prayer that the child would come to understand much more as she grew.

Jesus was never a self-promoter. It’s impossible to make the case from the gospels that he ever thought that it was all about him. Throughout his public life he directed his energy to instilling in his listeners an unshakable faith in the Reign of God. He strove to create in his countrymen the guiding hope for the day when the world would finally become the magnificent reality that God had been offering humanity from the start.

Jesus so totally identified himself with God’s New World that he equated his healing, his forgiving, his loving, his assurance with God’s healing, forgiving, loving and assurance. If folks would only reach out and grasp the reality he presented them with, the World of God’s Promise would be theirs. There was no gap between his love for them and God’s love for them. There would be no gap between their love for one another and God’s love for them.

Then everything crashed. There were threats and tension, an arrest and an execution. The dream, the promise died. But it didn’t.

People who had really known Jesus experienced his touch, his forgiveness, his loyalty, his joy – him – as alive as he’d ever been. The promise endured. The New World of God was unstoppable. It was theirs if they would only live it. Nothing could take it away.

Who rose on the first Easter? We did. The world did. God’s fondest hope rose.

“What difference does it make whether Jesus is God or not. He was an excellent teacher and an amazing moral example. That’s good enough for me. His divinity just isn’t something I think about.” With that my lunch companion took a bite of salad. She viewed her point as unassailable and the issue exhausted.

Many active, committed Catholics doubt or find little need for Jesus’ divine status. Without in any way calling it into question, I agree that the idea of Jesus’ divinity is difficult.

The belief that Jesus was both completely human and truly divine goes back to the earliest days of the gospel. Proving that this belief is true or explaining how it can be true, is beyond us here. It will have to suffice to say that this is our Faith.

The belief in Jesus’ divinity plays a crucial role in Catholic faith, however.

There are huge arguments about how God reacts to human events. If we win a game, God was on our side. If we lose, God either has a plan that we don’t know or God is punishing us for something. If we look at Jesus’ life, we quickly arrive at the realization that God isn’t involved in who wins or loses but cares deeply that the whole experience enhances the lives of all involved.

When we watch Jesus relate to people, we watch God relate to people. Jesus revealed God in his actions. He loved, he forgave, he healed, he listened, he didn’t count costs, he gave himself, he bet everything he had on people. When we see Jesus act, we see God act. When we know Jesus, we know God.

Do we know the totality of God? No. We know the reality of God that we need to live the gift that God gives us. That’s the revelation of Jesus. That’s the work of Jesus setting us free to overcome evil.

Think how often we argue about how God relates to people. Then think how seldom we argue about how Jesus related to people. For those who know Jesus as God-among-us, that’s the point.

Years ago a parishioner told me of things he had done in the past that he knew were wrong. He was certain that his actions had hurt God who in return would doubtlessly punish him.

I asked him why he thought that God would punish him. “God cares about us and how we treat one another,” he said. “God has to be upset with me and I’ll have to pay the price.” “In fact,” he continued, “I feel like God has already pulled away from me.”

Our image of God determines how we believe God acts.

If we picture God as a super human being, God will act the way human beings act – only with super-human strength. His patience will wear thin. On occasion he’ll decide that he needs to show who’s boss. He’ll feel ignored or slighted or jealous.

If we think of God as somehow separate from us – out there somewhere, we can imagine God being, at times, closer to us than at others. We can think of God caring more for some people than others.

A young man once adamantly informed me that he would picture God any way he wanted and no one would push their idea of God on him. He was right, of course. Still, the image of God he chose would affect him and, through him, the people around him. Willy nilly, his choice would have consequences.

Next time you hear someone talk about how God will treat someone they dislike, someone who’s done them wrong or disagrees with them, notice what image of God they turn to. Almost always it will be the super human God; the God “out there.” Rarely will they turn to a God who intimately knows and loves their enemy. Rarely will they turn to a God constantly creating every atom of their enemy’s being.

Christians too often have several gods and they put the one on the altar that gets them the result they want.

The image of God we choose makes a difference. And that brings us to Jesus.

Most folks tend to think of God as the biggest, strongest, all-around best being of us all. But the “of us all” is a problem. God isn’t one of us. There isn’t a hierarchy of beings that starts with atoms and moves up through worms, foxes, chimpanzees and human beings with god at the top of the pyramid. God isn’t another being like us, regardless of how wonderful and powerful we make him. God isn’t part of our pyramid. God is, instead, the reason that everything that we know exists. “So what,” you might ask.

One reason for rejecting the idea that God is in any way one of us lies in the great danger we face of giving God human weaknesses and prejudices. For instance, think how we turn God into someone we must bargain with, trading prayers and good works for things we want. Think of how we make God vengeful and petty. We do this even though we say that God loves everyone completely and perfectly.

Though it is natural to create God in our image, the great religions of the world have fought against it. Judaism has forbidden the word God to be spoken or an image of him made. Islam forbids images of God. Buddhism teaches that God is beyond our ability to know. Christian Tradition has been inconsistent on the matter though it has a deep philosophical tradition of God’s incomprehensibility.

St. Thomas Aquinas spoke of God as Pure Being, though not being as we experience it. St. Paul wrote that God is Love, though not the imperfect love that we give and receive even on our best days.

Who is God? Thomas and Paul were serious when they said God is Being and Love. It’s difficult to wrap our minds around that. But it’s worth the effort. It beats thinking of God as our Uncle Harry – super-sized!

You shall not kill – unless you’re in a war, someone is attacking your spouse or children or you’ve got some other good reason. You shall not steal – unless you are starving and your neighbor, with more than enough food, refuses to share. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor – unless it’s necessary to prevent unjust harm to yourself or other innocent people. Unless I misread our situation, this is how folks really understand the Commandments.

Even though most Christians claim that God in some manner gave these rules to us, we mold and remold them until they fit into what we think is sensible.

What do we honestly think the Commandments are? What practical role do they play in our lives?

Some folks see the commandments as God’s posted warning: Do this thing and I’ll punish you in this life and the next. Others see the commandments as a list of behaviors God dislikes but stands ready to forgive without penalty if we show fitting remorse.

Many view the commandments as fine ideas if you’re religious; however, since they were generated by ancient peoples and situations, they’re not realistic for our lives.

Finally, there are those who view the commandments as essential behaviors, learned under the Spirit’s guidance, that are necessary if humanity is to arrive at the world God promises. Each failure to pursue them delays that world and prolongs the injustice and suffering that we all endure.

Which view of the commandments to adopt? The best of Catholic Tradition uses the fourth.