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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