The answer
Origen writes that just as the apostles knew how to use their authority, so will the priests, who are ordained according to the order of Christ, the Great High Priest, know how to use their authority.1628 He affirms the same concept in another context as well. In one of his homilies on Leviticus, he writes that Christ, who laid the foundation of priesthood in the Church, willed for the priests to bear the sins of their people and in the likeness of their divine Master, grant forgiveness for these sins.1629
St John Chrysostom says that priests on earth “have received an authority which God has not given to angels or archangels. Not to them was it said, ‘What things soever you shall bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven; and what things soever you shall loose, shall be loosed’ (c.f. Matt. 18:18) … What priests do on earth God ratifies above. The Master confirms the decisions of his slaves. Indeed, he has given them nothing less than the whole authority of heaven.”1630
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
1627 Ernest Latko, Origen’s Concept of penance, Laval 1949, p. 72f.
1628 Cf. Origen, “On Prayer” in Origen, An Exhortation to Martyrdom etc., trans., Rowan A. Greer (NY: Paulist Press, 1979) 28.8–9: p. 150–151 (PG 11:527–530).
1629 Origen, Homilies on Leviticus 1–16 5.3 (FOTC 83:93–96; PG 12:451).
1630 St. John Chrysostom, Six Books on the Priesthood 3.5 (PP 1:72) amended.