3RD SUNDAY OF
LENT B
YEAR OF THE CLERGY AND
CONSECRATED PERSONS
MARCH 4, 2018
Jesus, I trust in you!
Last Sunday, Jesus was transfigured
before his disciples. His face shone like the sun and his clothes became
dazzlingly white. By this, he revealed to his disciples his glory as God the
Son. A shining cloud descended and enveloped him in the very same way that the
cloud of God’s presence descended upon the Temple on the day it was consecrated
by Solomon: “The cloud filled the temple of the Lord so that the priests could
no longer minister because of the cloud, since the Lord’s glory filled the
temple.” God, who cannot be contained by the highest heaven, decided to dwell
in the temple built by Solomon. (1 Kings 8) The Temple is the consecrated place
where God dwells among his people.
Jesus is truly the Temple of God
because in him dwells the fullness of the Divinity. This is the reason why he
said: “Destroy this temple and in 3 days I will raise it up…he was speaking
about the temple of his body.” After the transfiguration, Jesus admonished his
disciple not to tell anyone of what they have seen until he has risen from the
dead. This is because they will understand the glory that they saw in Jesus
only after the resurrection has taken place. In the same manner, the disciples
understood Jesus’ words about the temple being destroyed and rebuilt only after
the resurrection: “Therefore, when he was raised from the dead, his disciples
remembered that he had said this, and they came to believe the Scripture and
the word Jesus had spoken.”
St. Paul tells us that we, baptized
Christians, are also temples of God. This is because at our Baptism, God the
Holy Spirit descended upon us and made his dwelling in us. This is the reason
why we must strive to be pure as Christ is pure. “Do you not know that your
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and
that you are not your own?” (1 Cor. 6:17-20) In the Gospel, the Lord Jesus was
driven by holy zeal as he cleansed the temple of everything that should not be
found in it: “Take these out of here and stop making my Father’s house a
marketplace. His disciples remembered the word of Scripture, ‘Zeal for your
house will consume me.’” The Temple of Jerusalem was the Father’s house. Jesus’
body was the Temple of God the Son. We, baptized Christians, are Temples of God
the Holy Spirit. In the manner that the Father’s house was cleansed by Jesus
and he kept himself pure, so also Jesus desires that we be cleansed for God’s
Temple is holy and we are that Temple. As water washes away impurities, so also
the waters of Baptism cleansed us and made us temples of God. The waters of
sorrow for sins, the tears of compunction, also cleanse us and make us worthy
dwellings of the Holy Spirit. Thus, it is important to regularly examine our
conscience so that we can detect impurities within us that should be cleansed
by confession. We examine our conscience by measuring our lives according to
the 10 commandments revealed to us by the first reading.
Jesus made a whip out of cords and
drove out from the temple area everything that did not belong to the holiness
of the temple. In the same manner, we must use a whip of cords to drive out
from the temples of our bodies everything that should not be found in it. The
whip of cords would be our acts of penance and mortification: fasting,
abstinence, prayer, almsgiving, whole hearted acceptance of sufferings…these
penitential acts cleanse us and keep us pure as temples of the Holy Spirit. By
these acts of penance we proclaim in our bodies the death of Jesus. We die to
ourselves and we die to the world. “We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling
block to the Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are
called…Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
O Mary conceived without sin, pray
for us who have recourse to thee!
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