The cleansing in the temple which is in today’s Gospel offers us an amazing opportunity to renew the integrity of our love for Jesus.
As we prepare for Easter, the season of Lent offers us an opportunity to delve into our own hearts and consider what wants throwing out. If we imagine Jesus going into the temple and getting mad with all of the commerce going on there, then we can imagine what he might think of some of what goes on in our own hearts. Much of our activities and wants are not necessary, sometimes even damaging to our spiritual life. Jesus would like to cleanse our hearts. We are the Temple of Christ, and it is within our walls that his love may develop to all of those others who are yet to discover the love of God. We are the sounding board of Christ’s great message, and it is through our dedication to his message that we have the opportunity to change the world. But we must also change ourselves. And that is often a difficult process.
There was a certain violence to the way that Jesus went through the temple in today’s Gospel. And it is sometimes with such dedication that we must go through our own hearts to root-out, systematically, all of what does not belong there. If Jesus did not care what was going on in the temple then he wouldn’t have acted with such emotion. Similarly, it is those moments of our own life, those in which we are torn with emotion, that often become the touchstone for our changing.
Let us, then, go through our own temple today, and be careful what to throw, what to keep. And may we thank the Lord for his love for us, and for the gift of faith.
GOSPEL
The Lord be with you
And with your spirit.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John 2:13-25
Glory to you, O Lord
Just before the Jewish Passover Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and in the Temple he found people selling cattle and sheep and pigeons, and the money changers sitting at their counters there. Making a whip out of some cord, he drove them all out of the Temple, cattle and sheep as well, scattered the money changers’ coins, knocked their tables over and said to the pigeon-sellers,
‘Take all this out of here and stop turning my Father’s house into a market.‘
Then his disciples remembered the words of scripture:
Zeal for your house will devour me.
The Jews intervened and said,
‘What sign can you show us to justify what you have done?‘
Jesus answered, ‘Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days I will raise it up.’
The Jews replied, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this sanctuary: are you going to raise it up in three days?‘
But he was speaking of the sanctuary that was his body, and when Jesus rose from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the words he had said.
During his stay in Jerusalem for the Passover many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he gave, but Jesus knew them all and did not trust himself to them; he never needed evidence about any man; he could tell what a man had in him.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.