Dear Friends,
Many might interpret the gospel to be the end of the world and be screaming in church repent, repent, the end is coming!! But we know that God is love and prepares everything for us so that we turn to him. One of the saints said: the most important thing in life is to love Jesus Christ, the rest is vanity. How true!
Jesus tells us something wonderful in the gospel. The temple you have built in your life is so beautiful, clean, modern, with costly stones will one day be thrown down. There will not be one stone left upon another. It is necessary that this temple come down. The one you built that has your god within it, that you are constantly improving and adding to it each day with your projects and your plan for your kids and your marriage and your work that is so pretty.
Yes, our Lord prophesizes that it has to come down. Not one stone will remain upon another. In this temple where no God exists, only yours, and everything revolves around you. All that you want and organized and where incense is beautifully given to your image at your altar of yourself and your money and your sexuality. This has to come down. God has to do this out of love for you.
The first reading is also marvelous. The day is coming when all the proud and evildoers will be set ablaze like stubble in an oven. It will all go away. This old man will be gone. This temple can be destroyed in an earthquake or with Covid or with a cancer. If you have had this kind of experience, you can be full of joy. You are free. You don’t have to live any longer for yourself, in fear and anxiety. Christ came not to bring peace, but war so that you can be free. Because you say on Monday I will not drink anymore, I will not scream at the kids, I will be attentive to my spouse but by Friday you do not do the good that you want, but the opposite. Once this temple is destroyed you can experience freedom, you can love and give yourself. Only Christ can free you from this body of death.
Let the sun of justice shine on you with its healing rays. Your bitterness and frustration can be changed overnight. You will suffer a little, but you have a chance to live as a new man. We all have to go through a dark night when everything we think is important is taken away. He knocks down our temple. Our Lord uses this to free us from affections, from a disordered sexuality, from the worship of money. He transforms us. It is like the night of Passover when suddenly we are free. We are no longer slaves. Now we can be an ‘other Christ’.
Ask Jesus Christ to throw down this idolatrous temple that we all have built. He will build a true temple of faith, of love, where he can be born in us and give us the capacity to love. The church doors are magical, no? When we enter, we are all very good and holy, but when we leave we can do very stupid things. Don’t live in the world. Convert, brothers and sisters. Allow the sun of justice to shine on you and give you peace. He will love you as you are.