Dear Brothers and Sisters,
When the Romans celebrated their victory over the Jews and the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., they exhibited the contents of the sanctuary in a procession in Rome. It consisted of the offering bread like the manna in the desert, the menorah and the tablets of the Commandments. It was not a big booty for the time and effort they made. It might even seem that the Jews were not defeated at all. Their treasure was written in their hearts; it was deeply inscribed there, and only the written form was lost. It begs the question of us: do we worship gods that can easily be taken from us? The god of money, and health, and family. The pandemic shows us how easily these gods can be taken from us. It reminds me of the irony of the early persecutions of the Church. Rather than destroying it by killing so many Christians, nothing helped it to grow more than the spirit shown when these martyrs were crucified, or burned at the stake, or thrown to wild beasts in the arena.
The gospel shows that the place of worship is no longer the temple but the body of the Risen Lord. Someone wrote recently that for Jesus ‘zeal for my house’ meant zeal for our souls, our hearts. That is where he wants to dwell. So cultivate a place for him to dwell or abide with you. Say an aspiration often, hundreds of times during the day, for example, “Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, or help me.” His peace will come to you. God wants us to live as he and his Son live, with a great freedom to love and be loved. He can’t dwell in a heart that exploits others and neglects the weak ones. He throws out of his temple those who are only working for their own interests. In the gospel he is the only one who works, by making a whip, the others only sell and sit.
The verse just before this gospel says that Jesus went down to Capernaum to be ‘not many days’ with his mother and relatives. He could not stay longer. He had to get to his Father’s house in Jerusalem. He had a mission to accomplish and nothing would stop him. Zeal for my house will consume me. It will do more than consume him; it will kill him. That phrase comes from Psalm 69 and just before that verse it says: I became a stranger to my brothers, which was true for Christ. He had no abiding place; he only wanted to be with his Father. Let us have the same desires, brothers and sisters, to only be with the Father now and eternally. Lent is a training for heaven, for eternal life, so that we get used to living only for Christ, and not for ourselves.