Who or what are the money changers in your Temple? During Lent, Jesus wishes to purify the temples of our hearts.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus throws the money changers out of the Temple.  Jesus literally upsets the temple customs of his day and then invites the people around Him to change their idea of where God’s true dwelling is soon to be found.  Rather than a holy place of prayerful encounter with God, the temple precincts had begun to resemble a marketplace, and Jesus’ actions registered loudly and clearly as a prophetic protest against the exploitation of the temple and the people of Israel.  Jesus is clear about “His Father’s house” being a place of prayer and covenant, a place where God dwells.

Today’s reading remind of that most basic truth that God is the center of our lives.

As this Gospel is proclaimed in our hearing, we are prompted to wonder what the returning Jesus may find needs cleansing or replacing in our personal spirituality and in our celebration of Sunday Eucharist.  What attitudes, preoccupations, or desires do you bring to your prayer and life that Christ would “drive out” if you would let him?

In other words, what needs to be driven out of your inner temple for you to have zeal for God?  From what do you need to repent in this Lenten season?  As we pray over the Gospel, can we listen to the echo of the confrontation of Jesus that addresses the temples of our present day lives?   Who or what are the moneychangers in your Temple?  Is it greed, an excessive preoccupation with our possessions, is it the way we deal with the setbacks in our life, can we let go of an anger we feel toward a particular person, or is it our inability to focus on what is really important in our life?  Jesus purified the Temple.  During Lent He invites us to purify the temples of our hearts.

Lord, there are so many temples that people are turning into market places today:

n  Children are a sacred trust, but at times we compromise their safety and do not nourish their growth and faith as disciples of Jesus.  We think of violent school killings.  May we also think of all the ways we teach our children to be competitioners, rather than teaching them the lessons of the heart.

n  Instead of reverence for the temple of mother earth, we see it as a source of easy profit.

n  Sometimes we use the temple of the sacredness of the human body for our own sexual pleasure.

n  Even a church community becomes a place for prestige and power.

Lord, forgive us that we ae no longer indignant when sacred places are being violated.  We thank you for the times you sent Jesus into those temples; he made a whip out of some cord and drove us out, scattering our coins and knocking tables over.

What kind of cleansing does Jesus wish in do in the celebration of our Sunday Eucharist?

Perhaps Jesus would suggest there is room for improvement in having more lector training, would he suggest that the homilists are a bit long winded at times, or the choir music could be reviewed and improved?

Or would Jesus be convinced that there are more important realities in evaluating of our liturgies?

Would he point out the discrepancies between the prayers we say and the way we live our life?   Do we walk our talk in witnessing to the love of the compassionate Jesus?  He might ask if we come together to be entertained or to be edified.  “Father I don’t get anything out of Mass.”  Do we gather at Sunday Eucharist to get or to give?  Should our focus be on our desire to give praise and thanks to our God?   Would Jesus see a direct connection between God’s predilection for the poor and our own?  Would he see us translating this concern for the poor into generous giving and authentic service toward God’s least ones?   These need to be the defining characteristic of ourselves as a Eucharistic community.

If God is not alive all week in us, God will not be alive on Sunday.  If he is not alive in our hearts – well, maybe that‘s sometimes why religion can be so boring.  For religion can be very boring if  our hearts are not touched.

But the dramatic action of Jesus – driving out the merchants and moneychangers – is not the most shocking feature of this Sunday’s Gospel.  Not only does Jesus cleanse the Temple, he declares that he himself replaces it.  The place of God’s presence among His people is not a building but ‘the temple of his body.’  In Jesus we encounter the living God.  The real priority of our lives is our covenant relationship with God.  Our relationship with God is measured by how well we pattern our lives after Jesus in dying to ourselves for the good of others so that we might rise with him.  As believers and followers of Jesus our own bodies are also temples of the Holy Spirit.  God dwells not primarily in this building, but rather in us who are the living Temples of the Spirit of Jesus.  May we always reverence the presence of Christ that we experience in our sharing with one another.

At the Eucharist, we remember what God has done for us in the person of Christ.  Through his perfect gift of self, we are given the grace to turn our hearts and minds back to the God of love and life,  For our worship to be genuine, it not only means participation at the altar, but also a sincere reorienting of our lives to reflect the example set by Jesus.  When we say Amen we are agreeing to the power of such transformation and recommitting ourselves to living it out.

Have a Blessed Day.