In today’s Gospel from Mathew, Jesus is asked by what “authority” he is doing the miraculous things people are seeing. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that there are, as we know, different kinds of power. There’s a power that flows from strength and energy. We see this, for example, in the body of a gifted athlete who moves with authority. There’s power, too, in charisma, in a gifted speaker or a rock star. They, too, speak with a certain authority and power. But there’s still another kind of power and authority, one very different in kind from that of the athlete and the rock star. There’s the power of a baby, the paradoxical power of vulnerability, innocence, and helplessness. Powerlessness is sometimes the real power. If you put an athlete, a rock star, and a baby into the same room, who among them is the most powerful? Who has the most authority? Whatever the power of the athlete or the rock star, the baby has more power to change hearts. The Gospel texts, which tell us that Jesus spoke with “authority,” never suggest that he spoke with “great energy” or “powerful charisma.” In describing Jesus’ authority, they use the word “exousia,” a Greek word for which we don’t have an English equivalent. What’s “exousia”? We don’t have a term for it. Still, we have a concept: “Exousia” might be described as the combination of vulnerability, innocence, and helplessness that a baby brings into a room. Its very helplessness, innocence, and vulnerability have a unique authority and power to touch your conscience. It’s for good reason that people watch their language around a baby. Its very presence is cleansing. However, a couple of other elements, too, undergirding the authority with which Jesus spoke. His vulnerability and innocence gave his words an extraordinary power, yes. Still, two other aspects also made his words powerful: His words were always grounded in the integrity of his life. As well, people recognized that his authority was not coming from him but from something (Someone) higher whom he was serving. There was no discrepancy between his words and his life. Moreover, his words were powerful because they weren’t just coming from him, they were coming through him from Someone above him, Someone whose authority couldn’t be challenged, God. You see this kind of authority in persons like Mother Teresa and Jean Vanier. Their words had a special authority. Mother Teresa could meet someone for the first time and ask him or her to come to India and work with her. Jean Vanier could do the same. A friend of mine shares how, when meeting Vanier for the first time, Vanier invited him to become a missionary priest. That thought had never before crossed his mind. Today, he’s a missionary. What gives some people that extraordinary power? “Exousia” is a selfless life and a grounding in an authority that comes from above. In persons like Mother Teresa and Jean Vanier, you see the powerlessness of a baby combined with a selfless life grounded in authority beyond them. When such persons speak, like Jesus’, their words have real power to calm hearts, heal them, change them, and, metaphorically and really, cast out demons from them.