The Transfiguration and the Authority of the Teacher

Wielding Authority as a Gift for Our Students

by Kyle Albarado, Junior Fellow

Today, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord. The Father gives witness to the authority of the Son, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

Authority is not a very popular idea in our day and age. However, there is freedom in the right response to authority: the virtue of docility. Docility is the mean between the two extremes of a disordered response to authority. The response to authority is disordered when the regard for authority is deficient and when it is excessive. Deficient regard for authority makes us unteachable while excessive regard makes us indoctrinated, passively receiving teachings superficially.

This contrasts docility as a virtue from the pejorative sense it usually invokes. Most people hear docility and think of passive, uncritical obedience. Sadly, some teachers might even desire this for their students, but this is a desire of self-interest: an example of teachers seeking what is comfortable over what is good for the student. This, however, is the excessive regard for authority that real docility corrects. Docility frees the student to learn from authority by engaging at multiple levels of thought and with the right use of their will. Pejorative docility shuts down thought and disengages the will.

“…listen to him.” Listening with docility is active. It is with faith that seeks understanding. I have yet to meet a teacher that does not desire the virtue of docility for their students (even if they know it by another name). What is more rare is to find teachers who boldly accept their authority and wield it with care, precision, and confidence.

Christ is not timid or embarrassed by the authority he receives from the Father. Here we see a world of difference between authority that is received and authority that is imposed. Imposed authority comes from insecurity and a desire for control where force is the mechanism of engagement. Even the timid teacher who shrinks from their authority may sometimes be doing so from a desire to control their students’ regard (or excessive worry about how they are regarded by their students). So the golden mean appears the measure of justice when wielding God-given authority. Serving the needs of our students is the mechanism of engagement when we receive our authority as a gift.

Balancing the extremes of the deficit of rejecting one’s own authority and the excess of becoming a despotic tyrant is where we can receive authority as a gift and then use it as a gift for our students. Students are really good at sniffing out self-interest from benevolence in the adults around them. Sacrificial benevolence, when recognized by our students, gloriously transfigures our authority. It is an invitation for our students to see that our discipline, correction, and guidance comes from a place of willing their good rather than imposing our convenience.

Sacrificial benevolence may not be quickly recognized, but it is the proper lens that transfigures our authority. The Father will not boom our credentials from heaven (probably). But we will appear different in the eyes of our students when we boldly receive authority and wield it with the meekness that grants inheritance. Instead of being ashamed of authority, the magnanimous teacher allows it to be an occasion for beatitude . “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” Do we listen to Christ in these words with the authority granted him by the Father?

Meekness is strength under control. I think we should have a healthy fear of becoming a tyrant in our classroom, exercising our strength without control. Authority is strength. Meekness is what breaks wild strength and directs toward a purpose. The strength of our authority will be augmented through meekness by our active recognition of Christ’s authority. This recognition highlights how our authority is borrowed. It is not our own. This is where authority as a blessing comes into the picture. When we see our authority as something to receive freely and give freely, it becomes a near occasion to grow in grace and virtue, for us and for our students. Our students will never grow in docility if their teachers are unwilling to wield their authority. May the Transfiguration of our Lord teach us to receive our authority as Christ received his: as a gift from the Father, exercised in meekness for the good of others, so that those entrusted to us may truly learn to “listen to him.”