The cleansing of the temple

It’s already the third Sunday of Lent and Holy Week is now fast approaching and today’s gospel reading comes from John 2:13-25 and it is about the cleansing of the temple, an event in the ministry of our Lord that has great significance to his disciples because while this incident happened right after his self-manifestation in the wedding at Cana where he turned water into wine, all these events in his life are intertwined and would only be clearly understood after his resurrection.

“13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.

16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”

19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?”

21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. 23 Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. 24 But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. 25 He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.”

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If you’ve been reading the life story of our Lord Jesus Christ, you will notice that he had been to Jerusalem at least twice (but his parents always go to Jerusalem during Passover) before he returned there to be tried and crucified. The first we learned about Jesus in the Temple was when he was still a young boy who came for Passover with his parents on a caravan. After Passover, the caravan returned to Nazareth but his parents only later realized that the boy Jesus was not with them. So they returned to Jerusalem to search for him.

After three days, they found Jesus speaking to the teachers and doctors, asking them questions and giving them answers that astonished them. When the Blessed Virgin Mary asked the boy Jesus, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” The boy Jesus replied, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

The Jewish Temple was the center of the center of the Jewish universe and all Jews go there to worship. But the temple had a place where those who lived in faraway lands and did not use the denarii of the Jews could exchange their money and buy sheep, doves, or even bullocks to offer to the temple priests. The temple reeked of the bloody sacrifice of animals, which is why when our Lord Jesus died on the cross, the temple veil that surrounded the Holy of Holies was rent in two to signify that a new form of bloodless sacrifice through the bloody death of our Lord had now taken over which Christians call the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

So when Jesus came into the temple market area to overturn the tables of the moneychangers and whip the animals to run away, he shouted,

“Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” Indeed, the temple is a place of worship, just like our churches today is a place of worship. What the Lord wanted to see in the temple was for the Jews to regard the temple in Holy Reverence. We, too, have to do this inside our churches.

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For email responses to this article, write to vsbobita@ gmail.com. His columns can be accessed through www. philstar.com.