DEDICATION OF LATERAN BASILICA/ 32ND SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME C
JESUS AND THE TEMPLE
JN 2: 13-22
MESSAGE
Reading the Gospels, one notices how important the Temple was to the Lord Jesus Christ. After his birth, he was presented in the Temple by his mother Mary, and his legal father, Joseph. Growing up, he deliberately stayed behind in the Temple as his parents returned home after their pilgrimage. Having been found with the teachers, Jesus proclaimed he was comfortable in the Temple, his Father’s house. In his ministry, he frequented the Temple courts to preach and people flocked to listen to him.
In today’s Gospel, the Lord defended the sanctity of the Temple against the merchants and businessmen who defiled the sacred building with their mundane transactions. This episode is often referred to as the “cleansing” of the Temple.
Like Jesus and the Jews of his time, Christians have inherited a sense of the sacredness of time, things, places and people. God has sanctified time such that we also need to dedicate time to pray and worship him, like on Sundays and fixed daily moments of prayer. God has sanctified certain places as privileged locus of encounter between him and his people, so we too, respect churches, chapels, shrines and altars. We believe that though God is everywhere, the Lord dwells in places consecrated to him. From these places, graces flow.
As Catholics, we have churches that appeal to us not only architecturally, but also spiritually. Some love to go to special shrines like Quiapo for the Black Nazarene, or Baclaran for the Mother of Perpetual Help. Others simply love visiting their local parish church, village chapels or adoration chapels. It is not the building per se that makes a difference, but the knowledge that the Lord dwells in it and meets us there in silence, solitude, and prayer.
REFLECT
Let us continue to foster a sensitivity to sacred places and things, for these are sacraments of Divine Presence and Power, especially in our world that is full of secularism and materialism. But always remember too, that your heart is the first dwelling place of Jesus, and your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Even outside a church, you can seek him and encounter him within.
