The Cleansing of the Temple: A Reflection on the Third Sunday of Lent (Year B)

The dramatic scene we have depicted for us in today’s Gospel is Jesus’ cleansing or purification of the temple.  When Jesus arrived in the temple area of Jerusalem, which was crowded with money changers and sellers of oxen, sheep, and doves, he proceeded to flip over their tables and chairs and drive them out with a whip of cords! And then comes the chilling pronouncement: “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”  Elsewhere, St. Matthew recounts the same incident with, “My house shall be a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of thieves.”

What can we make of this?  This is certainly not the often portrayed meek and mild Jesus.  The apostle John’s immediate inclusion that “his disciples recalled the words of Scripture, Zeal for your house will consume me”, gives us in important clue.  This quote is from Psalm 69:8 and taken as a whole it is a psalm prayer of deepest distress and lamentation.  The full text of verse 8 is, “for zeal for your house consumes me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me”.  See how Jesus’ great love for his Father made all the insults that were being perpetrated in the temple courts to fall on him!  We well remember how many years before, at the age of twelve, the boy Jesus was so taken with reverence and awe for the holy temple in Jerusalem that he didn’t want to leave.  He simply had to be in his Father’s house!  But now the great Lion of Judah manifests his powerful longing to set things right! Yet, knowing all the while that claims about his relationship with the Father and these very actions that follow from it will be the cause of controversy leading ultimately to his death. “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”

The purpose of the temple of Jerusalem was meant to be a place where God would dwell with his people.  It was the place where the Shekinah, the divine presence of the Lord met his people but now selfish and unjust profit would be made on this gift. 

We might be tempted to shake our heads in disgust at the behavior of the temple merchants and even more at the Jewish leaders who permitted it and maybe even encouraged it for selfish gain.  But maybe we should not be too quick to do this for just as Jesus referred to his body as the temple, destroyed and raised up, so we too might want to reflect on ourselves as temples, as the temple of God.  St. Paul testifies that the spirit of God dwells in us, a Holy Spirit that makes each of us a temple of the Lord.  Especially when we receive the Holy Eucharist, we become bearers of the Divine Presence. 

Our Lord, the Divine Logos and creator of our souls may indeed look and remember - remember the moment he created us and the great beauty he has planned for us in being the unique (one of a kind) temple of the Lord.  As Dominicans, we remember that at Prouille St. Dominic and Bishop Diego gathered a group of women together into community to be “free for God alone and associated with his holy preaching by prayer and penance” (cf. Constitutions of the Nuns). The Nuns then and now would surely attest to the fact that this state of being – being free for God alone, this wonderful reality is (as the old dictum opines) first in intention but last in execution!  So, what are my attachments, my sometimes wayward or unruly desires, the pesky little habits that get in the way of the happiness of union with God that he has planned for me?

 We are most certainly not free but we can be made free by our patient cooperation with the purifying and cleansing power of Christ who loves us and wants with intense desire for each of us, to be a holy temple in the Lord, free from every spot or blemish.

"May the God of peace make you perfect in holiness.
May He preserve you whole and entire, spirit, soul, and body, irreproachable at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
- 1 Thessalonians 5:23