3rd March 2024
Lectionary Readings: Ex 20:1-17 or 20:1-3, 7-8, 12-17, Ps. 19, 8. 9. 10. 11, 1 Cor 1:22-25, Jn 2:13-25
Theme: Making us Holy
The gospel reading of today, John 2:13-25 and highlights two things. 1. Jesus is zealous for His Father’s house 2. Jesus, through His resurrection is the new temple, where sinners meet God. This is the big feast of the year with the celebration of the Jews “Passover”, time of worship, remembrance and reverence and an honoring God who had continually cared for and  provided and love his people.  This feast showed specifically  a time to celebrate and remember what God had done as he brought his people out of the land of Egypt and to even remember that tenth and final plague as the Angel of death passed over the houses that  have been covered in the blood of an unblemished sacrifice this become a biggest symbol of celebration of the year in Jewish tradition.
If we trying to harmonize the Gospel of Jesus begins his public ministry by focusing and cleansing the temple and there are thousands of people there and not only people but there are pigeons, cows, and goats and this place that he comes into is designed for worship, but instead of hearing people singing and praying it’s a different side of the coin. Jesus hears instead the bleating of sheep the lowing of oxen the flapping of wings and the exchanging of coin currency the way that we would typically interpret this passage in our own imagination is that Jesus walks into a temple there’s like a few people in there it’s a very different scene of the Feast of Passover every year a hundreds of thousands of Jews already live in Jerusalem and make a sacrifice using the the animals and the monopoly sale of animals was being run by the temple officials those whom were chosen to oversee the temple maintains a posture of worship and this is not how things should be.
Verse 15 says, Jesus made a scourge of cords and drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen and he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. In verse 16 take these things away stop making my Father’s house a place of business. Jesus says this is a place of worship, this is my father’s house, my father is being dishonored by what you’re doing. The typical and predominant demeanor of our Lord Jesus in the Gospels is one of compassion and mercy and love but here it is divine and righteous anger this why we need to understand the full spectrum of the character of God is so important, he is a God of mercy, love and compassion but he cannot stand hypocritical and dishonoring worship. He shows up here and begins to call out the Pharisees and unmasked their self-righteousness, hypocrisy, greed and he does so during the Passover the high point of their honor and responsibility. For this Jesus call us to become more Holy, because He have a zealous for his father’s house, lets imitate Jesus as we follow him and through Jesus resurrection is the new temple where sinners meet God because with Jesus Christ through the power of his resurrection being the new temple and we’ve been united with Jesus Christ then you and I if we are in Christ are temples of the Holy Spirit.
For Reflection and Discussion: 1. Do I Holy? And I’m doing Good or Bad? 2. Do I united to Jesus as a new temple?.
Bibliography: McKenzie, J.L. Dictionary of the Bible (New York: 1965), http://gcatholic.org/Catholic Study Bible (Senior D.)
This week’s Sunday Liturgy Commentary was prepared by
Dunhill Malunar Timkang, Israel, Bat Kol Alumnus: 2023
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