GOSPEL COMMENTARY Jn 2:13-25
As each of the four Gospel evangelists provide an account of
Jesus Christ cleansing the Temple, we recognize that it is a pivotal event in
His ministerial life. John’s description provides a dramatic scene, as Jesus
made a whip and drove out the money changers, those selling animals to be
sacrificed, and even the animals themselves. Amid the turmoil, as Our Lord
overturned tables, He shouted that His Father’s house should not be “a house of
trade.”
This cleansing occurred during Passover, when the Temple was
crowded with pilgrims from Israel and beyond. Therefore, we can imagine the
great chaos. With His actions, Jesus was disrupting and even destroying the
system that had been set in place for these many travelers to pay the temple
tax and purchase animals for sacrifice.
The reason that Jesus cleansed the Temple was because the
activity there was focused not on worship, but instead on worldly things. The
Temple was a holy place, a pilgrimage site where the Israelites went to pray
and make sacrifices to God. However, even the activity related to this worship,
that is, the selling of animals for sacrifice, was distracting from the worship
itself. The busy-ness and cacophony of the money changers dealing with foreign
coins and vendors exchanging animals for money was not drawing pilgrims closer
to God, but instead keeping them from the proper reverence required of a place
where the Israelites knew that the Most High God dwelled.
By chasing everyone and everything from the Temple area, Jesus
was clearing out all that distracted from reverence for God and set back in
order the practice of worship.
During the season of Lent, we might consider how we might do the
same. What in our lives is distracting us from our proper worship of the Lord?
Part of our daily worship should be time for prayer. It is
fitting during Lent to fast from an activity such as time spent on social media
or watching television to make more time for prayer. In this way, we turn our
eyes toward the Lord and sanctify our daily routine.
We call Sunday the Lord’s Day, but for many of us this, too, is a
day in need of some cleansing and reorganizing. While many of us try to squeeze
in Mass between many other activities each Sunday, we are called to make the
celebration of the Eucharist the cornerstone around which other events should
be planned. It is the most important activity in which we and our families will
participate each week, so we should treat our Sunday schedule as such. We must
also consider how we keep holy the rest of our Sundays, which can easily get
cluttered with unnecessary work and activities that pull us away from our
families and our prayers. Perhaps we can consider sanctifying our Sundays with
reading Scripture or making a pilgrimage to a holy site to pray. In this way,
we can turn our eyes toward the Lord and truly call it the Lord’s Day.
Finally, this Lent we can look at our practices of worship, such
as our individual prayer and even our routine for Sunday Mass. How is the Lord
calling us to disrupt our normal routine and make the changes that lead to an
experience that is less cluttered and more focused on God? This may mean
arriving at Mass early, or taking some time before our daily prayer to quiet
ourselves and be reminded that we are in the presence of God and about to encounter
Him. We may also consider spending some quiet time after Mass in order to
reflect on the readings, the homily, or the intimate encounter we just shared
with Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.
How is the Lord asking us to make extra efforts and to rearrange
our schedules in order to cleanse our lives of worship? This Lent, may we rely
on Christ’s grace to overturn the distractions in our lives and turn more fully
toward him in worship.
Fr. Wagner is parochial vicar of St. Veronica Church in
Chantilly.