3rd Sunday of Lent Fr. Leo
Jesus casting out the money changers from the temple area, the story we just heard from John’s Gospel, is the most assertive, some might say aggressive, Jesus is in all of sacred Scripture. His motive was his passion for true worship from the heart. The money making power structure that grew up around religious practice turned religion in to a legalistic practice with little attention to a relational God and Jesus wanted that with all his heart. For Jesus, God was Abba, and he wanted us to come to the same relationship with the Father.
Jesus wanted his Father’s house to be a house of prayer. Prayer is being in relationship with God and there is no cost to pay for being still and knowing God is God. Jesus was consumed with bringing genuine spirituality back into religion.
The end game of Catholicism, is to open our hearts to God that we may dwell in him and he in us. Our sacraments are designed to just that. The Eucharist is God giving himself to us as we receive and digest his word and sacrament. So to unite with Christ, is to become him in the way that is appropriate for us. So while we celebrate the rites of the Church, it is the Holy Spirit that is working to help us share in God’s divinity.
During mass, the priest adds a bit of water to the wine and prays: “Through the mingling of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” So that is God’s goal for us. We bring our lives to the table of the Lord to commune with him and then and we go forth, nourished to live every moment in the presence of God, living the ebb and flow of receiving and living, being a Eucharistic people in this world.
My prayer is that we would all have the passion Christ had for God. That we would be willing to keep the Sabbath holy and bring Christ back into our lives and our culture, that is so in need of His healing and Love.
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in us the fire of your love!