Today’s Gospel:  John 2:13-22

REFLECTION
The sanctuary had become a stable, the place of devotion, a den of thieves! We shall never know how often the Lord was deeply disturbed as He beheld the hypocrisy in the Temple of Jerusalem. Here, there, and everywhere, the money changers had set up their tables and had gone into business. Foreign currency was accepted, but the rate of exchange constituted robbery of the worst type. Pilgrims from distant lands probably knew they were being swindled, but what could they do? The temple offerings were sold at exorbitant prices, and what had been meant to be a means of grace was now so commercialized that God was not even remotely related to the daily routines.

And then Jesus came to the temple. He paused, frowned, made a whip from cords, and advanced toward the tables of the robbers. The money changers looked up expecting another victim, but recognizing the righteous indignation blazing in the Lord’s eyes, they became frightened and ran for the exits. “And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple.”

We might well ask, “What is the true temple. Is it some ornate cathedral which cost millions of pesos to erect? Is it some ancient shrine visited annually by countless pilgrims? Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). The Bible supplies a strange but suggestive parallel. The first sanctuary was but a tent in the wilderness, yet the glory of the Lord came to fill it. As the years passed, a tragic deterioration set in and when we find the temple on the pages of the New Testament, the glory-filled house had become a market. The same truths are exhibited in the story of the human sanctuary. Man was meant to be the companion of God; in the human breast, the Almighty planned to place His own glory. Yet something went wrong; the human heart has become desperately wicked; we have made it a den of thieves. What is true conversion? Is it not the coming of Christ to the very threshold of that human temple? Is it not the entrance of the Lord Jesus to overturn the tables of the money changers and herald the greatest housekeeping the human heart is ever likely to know?

Today’s Reading:  1 Corinthians 3:9-13, 16-17

PRAYER
Lord, come and do your housekeeping, not only on me, but also on this country that you have given us.  Turn me, and our community, into something that would reflect your glory.  In Jesus’ Name we pray.  Amen.