Matthew 21
Matthew 21:12-13:
12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’” |
The expulsion of the sellers from the temple is one of those pages of the Gospel that clash a bit with our imagery of an always serene, peaceful, meek Jesus. Actually, those who know the meek know that they almost never get angry, but when they do get angry, it’s big trouble.
And Jesus has a very serious reason to get angry: the Temple, which represents humanity’s relationship with God, is full of commerce and empty of love. To understand the concrete fallout of this in our lives we can consider an example. How would we judge a relationship based only on opportunism? Would we consider it love, or hypocrisy? Jesus is denouncing the opportunism that can lurk even in our relationship with God. If faith becomes only an exchange of petitions and graces then it’s no longer faith, but only religion, and a pagan one at that. Only when we reestablish a true prayerful relationship with God, which is a gratuitous relationship of good, does our religion cease to be pagan and become Christian faith. -Father Luigi Maria Epicoco is a priest of the Aquila Diocese |
Matthew 21:23:
“And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority? |
|