3rd SUNDAY of LENT, year B Third week of Lent : Third week of Lent, year ’B’.
"When the time of the Jewish the Passover drew near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. and in in the temple he found people selling cattle and sheep and doves, and the money changers sitting there. Making a whip out of cord, he drove them all out of the temple, sheep and cattle as well, scattered the money changers’ coins, knocked their tables over and said to the dove sellers, ’ Take all this out of here and stop using my Father’s house as as a market.’
The Temple is a place of beauty , an encounter with God. It is the place where God becomes close, where people accept to draw close to Him. At the period when Jesus lived , its beauty and wealth flattered men’s pride instead of serving God’s Glory alone. To join God, one had to pass through a whole mass of merchants and goods to be sold. Now the Jews were scandalized when Jesus chased the merchants from the temple. They had prepared in advance everything they needed , even the money changers! We do indeed prefer to control everything, we would rather tell people what to do and have a nice spirituality, all nice and orderly! The conversion Jesus announces is fundamentally new, a permanent turning towards God, Our Creature, who is Love. We need to come back to the origins , from where we have come from, that is, God’s unconditional Love. But within us we remember the refusal that was at the beginning, this sin that has wounded us. How quickly we forget God! And yet, “There is no other God than me” says God, He is Our Lord and Saviour, One True God. Adoration is a permanent and fundamental aspect of our divine life.
“Then his disciples remembered the words of Scripture : ’ I am eaten up with zeal for your house’. The Jews intervened and said,’ What sign can you show us that you should act like this? Jesus answered, ’ Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews relied : ’ It has taken forty-six years to build this Temple, are you going to raise it up again in three days? But he was speaking of the Temple that was his Body.”
in a language that no one was expecting, Jesus evokes the supreme work of God: “My Father’s House!” It will be the Resurrection of Jesus that will give a meaning to this phrase that will weigh so heavily upon him during his trial : “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.” Such is the central mystery of this passage, the Body of Jesus, His Living Person and to speak quite bluntly, this is the only place of encounter between God and men, between God and those who adore in Truth. In fact, it really is Him, Jesus Christ, who is the temple of the new Covenant for us; it is through him and in him that we have access to be close to the Father. Through Jesus, Son of the Father, the Father comes before us. Jesus alone offers up for us our daily sacrifice, our unanimous prayer. It is an astonishingly deep, purification that Jesus manifests to us. It reveals the greatness of our being, a temple of God. We are the marvelous image of God, we wish to establish the fundamental aspects of our house in God’s grace. The world knows nothing of God who created man in his image, at his resemblance with Him we are linked so as to become whom we truly are in our deepest being .
“And when Jesus rose from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and what he had said. During his stay in Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover many believed in his name when they saw the signs he did, but Jesus knew all people and did not trust himself to hem; he never needed evidence about anyone; he could tell what someone had within.”
God(s Temple is not made from men’s’ hands, the Apocalypse contemplates this in its definitive aspect, Jerusalem above is where we are heading. we think of this as we think about when God will have finished creating all things new. So the community of the redeemed ones will join Christ, full of Joy, like a young bride and with the huge happiness of being alive. God himself will wipe all tears from
our eyes, there will be death no more, no more tears, nor cries, nor distress, for the first creation will have disappeared. God has put his law of Love in our
hearts to help us learn how to love. As soon as we leave God, our heart hardens, scleroses and become a “heart of stone” A heart of flesh is one that will suffer, will become attached God gives us is Law of Love so as we can enter into an explosion of Love and of Life. He wants his Infinite Love, the Holy Spirit, to guide us ever more, he wants our own spirit to be in harmony with that of God.