The Authority of Compassion
The Church often wounds us deeply. People with religious
authority often wound us by their words, attitudes, and demands. Precisely because our religion brings us in touch with the
questions of life and death, our religious sensibilities can get hurt most easily. Ministers and priests seldom fully realize
how a critical remark, a gesture of rejection, or an act of impatience can be remembered for life by those to whom it is directed.
There
is such an enormous hunger for meaning in life, for comfort and consolation, for forgiveness and reconciliation, for restoration
and healing, that anyone who has any authority in the Church should constantly be reminded that the best word to characterize
religious authority is compassion. Let's keep looking at Jesus whose authority was expressed in compassion.
—Henri J. M. Nouwen
