“Take these out of here, 

and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”

We are moving into the Third Sunday of Lent. The Church invites us to continue our reflection on Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection as we share in this Paschal Mystery. If we go back to the readings, especially the gospels, of the past two Sundays of Lent, we can see that they are interconnected. On the First Sunday, after His Baptism, the Spirit led Jesus into the desert. He stayed there for forty days and forty nights in prayer, fasting and was tempted by the devil. But God came to His rescue through His angels. I call this as Jesus’ desert experience with God. On the Second Sunday, Jesus brought His three disciples on the top of the mountain and Jesus there changed in appearance. I call this the mountaintop experience of Jesus in His encounter with God. Today’s gospel is the cleansing of the temple by Jesus. The temple is a place of special encounter with God. In other words, the desert, the mountain and the temple are places of special encounter with God. Lent is perhaps a good time to visit our inner sanctuary more often and spend more time there listening to God’s voice.

In Jesus Christ, we encounter God in the new temple. Indeed, his own body, his own being will be the new Temple, the place where the holiness of God dwells. All the things that Jews were meant to find in the Temple: life, love, healing and forgiveness, from now on will flow through Jesus, through his broken and risen body and they will flow for all people, not just the people of Israel. In Jesus we are to find a new sanctuary which is a place of meeting with God, a place where God is present to us and we are present to and for him and each other, a place of relationship and community. The body of Christ is the true house of God that will last forever. The Eucharist is also, for us, the house of God in which we are united with Jesus Christ as he says: "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him" (Jn. 6:56). Jesus is the house of God, likewise, if we are worthy of it, we too become the house of God among people. Saint Paul tells us: "You are the body of Christ" and "You are the temple of the Holy Spirit." If Jesus lives in us and we in him, then we are his body, we are his temple. Hence, let us offer to God a home worthy of Him without impurity. Let us welcome the Lord with a pure heart, free of any attachment to creatures, entirely devoted to the things of God.

The Gospel story of Jesus cleansing the temple should remind us that we need to clean our soul from sins, bad habits or addictions. The sacrament of reconciliation is a gift of Jesus to the Church. We are called to use it during the Lenten season and more often. This sacrament is necessary to keep our temple of the Holy Spirit holy. This sacrament also gives us grace to fight off temptations in our daily life. With God there is always mercy and compassion. Jesus does not mind to forgive the same sins, as long as we are working on it until we stop it.

Each one of us is called to be the home, the dwelling place of God. Jesus says that if we keep and love his words he and the Father will come and dwell in us. There is a sacred space within each of us where love can dwell and flow from us, a place of peace and light, the place where God is. We are called to live our lives from that sacred space of God and to love and respect the sacred space of God in others.