Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary(Click here for readings)
Jesus entered the temple area and proceeded to drive out those who were selling things, saying to them, "It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves."
His Temple. It's amazing how much the Lord can say in so few words. We know the Temple is the place to worship God, for it is where God resides. But we also know that the true Temple of God is the body of Jesus Christ. "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (Jn 2:19). For "the God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands" (Acts 17:24).
Jesus is the Temple of God. Where He is, God is. The Lord is worthy of not only respect and admiration but of adoration. He is God. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God... And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us (Jn 1:1,14).
My Body. Now if the Church is the mystical body of Christ, the "sacrament" or visible sign of Jesus Christ, then we cannot forget that we are the temple of God. "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in your midst?" (1Cor 3:16).
So with all that said and done, the question now is: How is my house cleaning going?
My Body, His Temple. Unless we take matters into our own hands, then what happened to the thieves will happen to us.
He will turn our lives upside down and clean out our pockets!
Have I turned my body into a marketplace? Are my thoughts and actions geared towards material things? Tis the season, you know.
Let's be on our guard against all kinds of greed, pride and vanity, for they can easily permeate within us, take on flesh and masquerade as a good rather than what they really are - an evil.
Let's no forget: It's His Temple, our Body. Let's put our worldly desires to death, not Him.
"then we cannot forget that we are the temple of God. "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in your midst?" (1Cor 3:16)."
ReplyDeleteSometimes it's easy to look at ourselves and feel good about what we are doing. Bah humbug! What great saints like Blessed Mother Teresa were able to recognize (and that seems to elude me so much of the time) is that "the same Christ is really present in every man, woman, and child no matter how inhuman; for each has been shaped in the image of Christ, a likeness to Christ that even sin cannot utterly destroy." (Fr. Walter Burghart) That's really the challenge -- to see Christ in everyone and then to treat them with love. Never write off anyone.