How Awesome is the Place!!!

Homily for John 2 13-25 Third Sunday of Lent. March 10th, 2012

What a dramatic scene we just heard, Jesus comes to the temple and drives out the money changers- all those people who were doing commerce within the Temple area, which of course was the church building of the day. One can imagine the confusion and uproar at what happened, “the complete audacity of this man, to come into the temple and tell us what to do.” Of course it wasn’t audacity that Jesus possessed, it was Godly authority; and because of this authority, Jesus takes it upon Himself to drive out of His Father’s house all those who were not treating it as the awesome and holy place that it was.

Jesus bold action was done during a time of corruption, especially in the cult or religious practice of the Jews. As in many moments of Jewish history, as found in the Old Testament, the question of proper adoration was always the pivotal question with regards to the peoples’ relationship with God. We hear in our first reading, the first commandment, “I, the Lord, am your God- you shall not have other gods besides me. It seems the people were always testing this Commandment, which was a Commandment to adore God alone. For instance, in a story describing false worship found in Genesis, the people fashioned a golden calf and worship it—the calf symbolized the god Baal.

But, it wasn’t actually the golden calf that the people were interested in; no instead it was the liturgical cult or practice of this false religion. In the liturgical worship of Baal the people wanted to feel good. In this case to feel good the people went to the extreme, by actually practicing of a type of orgy like ritual, profaning the temple of their bodies in the process; it was truly an abomination before the Lord. In order to carry out these unconscionable activities they also had to practice other morally evil things like abortion, artificial contraception and even infanticide…yes, even back then these things existed and were an abomination before the Lord just as they are today.

All of the times the people went against the first commandment were the same, it was the people deciding on their own apart from the Command of God, how, when, and where they would adore God. In the process they ended up created a God of their own making. God, however, all the while was constantly calling the Jews back to proper adoration and worship of Him, adoration in Spirit and in Truth in order to bring the people in union with Him.

God always wanted to form a Covenant with the people, a Holy exchange of persons in which God would give to them all He has and is, and in return they would give back to Him all they have and are. But God will not be mocked; they had to and we have to worship God in the way and manner that He decides not us. True religion is to worship God not just anyway and in anyplace, but in the temple of God, the Holy Church and according to Her rituals and liturgies which come from God and not man.

It is God, who through His Church gave us the Liturgy, its words, gestures and action. Liturgy doesn’t get “created by liturgical experts or even by bishops or popes, it comes from God. He is the Creator not man. This is what lies at the heart of the problem of so many of the liturgical innovations and abuses that we seen after the Second Vatican Council…they come from man and not God.

In our Scripture readings today, the people were bowing down before other gods, not only the false gods of the Romans who occupied their country, but also the idols of greed and money, and in doing so they worshiped the unholy trinity of me, myself and I. It is against this background that Jesus acts; he shows the people His zeal for the Father’s house. He lets the people know that how a person behaves in the House of God, shows forth his inner love for the Father Himself.

By his action in the temple, Jesus points out that the lack of the people’s outward reverence is really a sign of the lack of their inner reverence toward God, their lack of proper adoration of God and thus their lack of true Love for God. This of course pricked the people’s conscience, and this pricking of their conscience forced the people to make a choice- do I repent and turn back to God and begin again to offer myself to Him through proper worship, or do I instead continue to construct more lies to justify myself? In the case of the Pharisees, and many of the Jews of the day, it was the second-they would plot to kill Jesus.

So as Jesus is driving out the moneychangers He exclaims, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace. In other words, stop treating it like any other place. Its not any other place, it is the place where heaven and earth meet, where the human and the divine kiss and embrace.” The Father’s temple is a house of adoration, it is holy ground; it is the place were God condescends, literally lowering Himself to actually meet his people in an intimate encounter, an encounter of divine love. And it is the place where the people response to God’s gift of Himself by offering themselves as a gift to God in return. By Jesus coming to the temple and purifying it of false worship, he was really telling the people, “I am God come down to you, this place is to be a place where we meet, where you adore me as God, where you respond to my divine presence in your midst, the place where in act of infinite love for you, I give myself to you and you in return for that love, give yourself to Me in love.

Once Jesus was bodily present in the temple of Jerusalem, the temple and its worship needed to be cleansed and purified, not just of the money changers, but cleansed of idolatry and false worship. Remember until Jesus came to the temple in Jerusalem, God was present in the temple only spiritually, but now He was present physically, bodily in Jesus. This coming of Jesus to the temple in a human body, was pointing to a time when Jesus would continually be bodily present in all the temples of the Catholic Church in the Holy Eucharist. The temple, from this point on was to be a place only of intimate heavenly encounters with the “God who is Love.” These heavenly encounters are of course known as the Sacraments of the Church, and especially through the Holy Sacrament of the Mass.

And the true temple is the Catholic Church; it is the Father’s House, the place where by baptism, God adopts us, literally taking us into His Family,/ the place where in confession, He gives us His fatherly pardon,/ the place where in confirmation, He gives us the courage and strength to do what pleases Him,/ the place where in Marriage, God seals the union of Husband and wife and makes them one flesh, /the place where we can come before Jesus still truly and bodily present in the temple--in the tabernacle, there talking to Him and listening to Him in prayer, asking for his help and advice; telling Him our joys and sorrows, our successes and failures and then basking in His divine consolation and love. And finally, the place where we can come and receive Jesus in Holy Communion, the true temple of His Body, not made by Human hands. In doing so, if we are worthy, that is if our souls are cleanse and pure of idolatry and false worship, we, ourselves can be made into living temples of the Living God, and so live our lives in a Covenantal union with Him.

People talk about experiencing God outside of organized religion or outside in nature, while it is true we can experience God anywhere all of creation is “sacramental, but for that experience to be authentic and truly pleasing to God, we must, must worship Him according to His rules and His commandments; and that is we must worship Him in His temple through His SACRAMENTS. God is present everywhere indeed, but He is only present physically, in His Body, in His true temple, the temple of the Catholic Church…It is only in the presence of His Body, and through His Body and with His Body, united with His worship and adoration of the Father at Holy Mass that we can offer the Father true adoration and worship in Spirit and in Truth, thus becoming pleasing to the Father…sorry, you can’t get this in the woods, or on a mountain, or looking out onto the ocean or any where else in God’s beautiful creation; no, you can only get in the temple of the Lord…the Catholic Church.

“How awesome is this place, this is truly the house of God this is truly heaven’s Gate.” So goes the song we sing every Sunday at Children’s adoration as the children of this parish actually bow down and worship and kneel before the Lord our maker...
Here in this Sacred House, through Jesus being truly presence here, we are all able to come to the Father, being absolutely sure that He loves us, despite everything. Let us continue to treat this house as a sacred house of silent prayer, Out of reverence to Jesus and His true Eucharistic Presence, and out of respect for our neighbor who is praying, let us help one another to never visit and talk in this sacred space, but only in the vestibule or at coffee and donuts; for if we treat this sacred place with disrespect I can promise you our Lord will treat us in no different manner than the money changers in the temple. Let us also continue to sacrifice in order to make this temple as beautiful as we can…Those who complain about money spent to build beautiful churches or on improvements to our churches don’t get it at all; they lack faith plain and simple. And as well then, let us with concern for one another, try to do our best to better support our parish family on which depends the salvation of so many souls, including yours and mine.

And even more importantly, let us ask God to purify our hearts and minds so that we can treat this sacred temple, this “House of God” with even more reverence by an even greater intensity of adoration of the God in Spirit and in truth. Let us never miss an opportunity to encounter this Great God of ours in the intimate embrace of the Sacraments--especially every Sunday at the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, which is heaven on earth--Jesus Christ-the total gift of the Father’s love. And most of all, in this penitential season of Lent, let us continue to ask of Father God for His grace so that He may more and more cleanse our souls, making them, through true adoration and worthily reception of the Holy Eucharist at Holy Mass, into worthy dwelling places, living temples made just for Him.




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