Today’s Gospel:  Luke 19:45-48

REFLECTION
In today’s Gospel reading we hear Jesus' cleaning out the temple where the religious system and temple economy takes place. He drives out the vendors and money-changers.  In this incident we see Jesus' startling and swift action in cleansing the temple of those who were using it to exploit the worshipers of God. The money changers took advantage of the poor and forced them to pay many times more than was right - in the house of the Lord no less! Their robbery of the poor was not only dishonoring God but unjust toward their neighbor.

When human beings replace the intense, personal interchange between themselves and God that is prayer with commercial haggling over material possessions, arguing with each other over price instead of wrestling with God over eternal values, it's time for a thorough “house cleaning."  Jesus came to clean house - our house.  So that in his death, we can be the temple - the house - of his spirit.  

Imagine yourself to be a house and what clutters the floor where you move, the shelves where you store memories, the couch where you spend downtime, the desk where you work. We need to see what kind of clutter we have in our own souls and find out what robs us of joy, of life, and of having our own house - a house of prayer.

Whether we are at our friends’ house, in church, in our own home or in our workplace, we need to keep in mind what actions and activities are appropriate in each place. The whole world is God's dwelling, and we who live in it do well to act justly, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with the Lord our God.

- MA

Today’s Reading:  Rev 10:8-11

PRAYER
Almighty Father, Put a new and right spirit within me. Dwell in me, make my body a “temple of your Holy Spirit” and do a good housecleaning in me. Purge all the "buying and selling" that takes place in my heart so that it will be a house of prayer.  In Jesus’ Name we pray.  Amen.