Archive for March 2nd, 2024

Zeal for Your House Will Devour Me

March 2, 2024

3rd Sunday of Lent
By Fr. Chinnappan Pelavendran

Like the desert (Lent week 1) and the mountain (week 2), the Temple is a place of special encounter with God. However, today we are not going to see the glorious face of Jesus; we are going to see his angry face. At the same time Jesus is kind and merciful, we should not take his kindness for granted. His love is forever yet, he corrects our faults. By chasing those buying and selling out of the Temple, Jesus gives us a foretaste of his wrath on those who do not obey the commandments of God. The Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:1-17) given by God are meant to be obeyed and kept by all. Yet many of us are taking it for granted. God is the Father of us all and he wants us to be upright.

For this reason, St. Paul tells us that, “while the Jews demand miracles and Greeks look for wisdom, here are we preaching a crucified Christ.” (1 Cor. 1:22-25) We preach Christ because he is the power and wisdom of God. Those who follow Christ are on the right path because he has the message of eternal life. Those who do not know Christ lack wisdom.

Since they lack wisdom, they turned the house of God, which is meant for prayer into a marketplace. Jesus proved to them that he had a strong desire to dwell in God’s house forever. He exclaimed, “zeal for your house will devour me.” (Jn. 2:13-25) This zeal to dwell in God’s house forever is the motivating factor behind Jesus’ mission. He has come to serve, not to be served, and to give his life as a ransom for many. The house of God is the house of prayer and worship.

On the spiritual level, the temple refers to every one of us. St. Paul tells us in the First Letter to the Corinthians (3:16-17) that we are God’s temple and God’s Spirit dwells in us. Therefore, if anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy the person, for God’s temple is Holy, and that we are.

For those who feel that going to church to worship God is not necessary, Jesus has proved to them that we meet in God’s house for adoration and prayers. The church is a sacred place. It should be kept holy and reserved for things concerning God. When we gather in the church, we are in the presence of the almighty and ought to maintain the decorum befitting his presence. May our Lenten observance help us to experience the presence of God among us.

Let us love our parish Church as “our Heavenly Father’s house” and make it a holier place by our care for it, by our active participation in the liturgy, by offering our time and talents in the various ministries, and by our financial support for its maintenance and development.

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Revere What Is Holy

March 2, 2024

3rd Sunday of Lent
By Fr. Victor Feltes

On a spring day before Passover, Jesus went up to the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. He found people there selling animals to be sacrificed; oxen, sheep, and doves. He also saw money changers doing business there, seated at their tables exchanging foreign currencies. Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, then made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area along with the sheep and oxen. He spilled the money changers’ coins and overturned their tables. The doves for sale were kept in cages, so Jesus told those vendors, “Take these out of here!” Jesus proclaims peacemakers blessed, yet we see that he is not a pacifist. His disciples who witnessed the event recalled a verse from Psalm 69, “Zeal for your house consumes me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.” So why was what was going on at the temple upsetting to Jesus and insulting to his Father?

Jesus said, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” He also quoted to them a verse from Isaiah, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” “But you,” Jesus said, “are making it ‘a den of thieves!’” Jesus was angered by how they were profaning the temple, exploiting the Jewish faithful, and being obstacles to foreign peoples’ coming to worship God. The Jews regarded marketplaces as impure places. St. Mark’s Gospel notes how “on coming from [marketplaces], they would not eat without purifying themselves.” Running a market at the temple was treating the holy place like somewhere base or ordinary. Jesus likened the vendors and temple officials to a den of thieves for charging the Jews who came for worship inflated animal prices and exploitive rates of exchange. And their marketplace was setup inside the Court of the Gentiles, the temple courtyard for all the nations, where God desired non-Jews to come and worship him. Consider how much harder it is to pray when surrounded by the noise of others. (This is why we encourage people after Mass to gather to chat in our vestibule or basement—to preserve the quiet of this holy place for the benefit of others at prayer.) Ultimately, Jesus cleanses the temple because the ways in which it was being profaned were creating obstacles to peoples’ deeper relationship with God.

A physical holy place can be profaned. Holy names can be treated profanely as well. God commands his people, “I, the Lord, am your God… You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain. For the Lord will not leave unpunished the one who takes his name in vain.” This second of the Ten Commandments forbids the misuse of God’s holy name. Swearing false oaths, invoking God to declare untruths, is taking his name in vain. Neglecting or spurning doing something that you have vowed to God, is taking his name in vain. And most commonly of all, using the Lord’s name without reverence and love (that is, blasphemy), is taking his name in vain. Using God’s name carelessly like a joke, employing the name of Christ like a word for excrement, treating holy things as base or ordinary creates a stumbling block for others as they see our Faith as foolishness. If we do not lovingly respect our holy friends in heaven and holy things on earth, then why should they? Only say “O my God” as an act of prayer. Only say “Bless your heart” if you sincerely mean it. And only say “I swear to God” about things which are gravely important and true.

The Second Commandment demands reverence for the Lord’s name for the same reason Jesus forcibly cleansed the temple; that people may come into deeper loving communion with God. Let us love God, and his holy ones, and everyone by word and deed, and respect his holy things and places. By our lived Christian example, may others come to do the same.

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