(Exodus 20:1-17; 1st. Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25)
My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I want us to carefully consider the words and actions of Jesus in today’s Gospel reading:
The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. in the temple He found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen. And He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And He told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away; do not make My Father's house a house of trade.”
Where, in our modern Church, could one find any responsible Catholic leader who would, under any imaginable circumstances, behave as did Jesus? And yet, Jesus most certainly meant His actions to be examples for His disciples. Here, He assaulted the money changers; He damaged, and possibly deprived them of, some of their goods; He drove the sheep and oxen out in a far from gentle manner; and speaking of the pigeons He said, “Take these things away”! And, on top of all, He did this in Israel’s most holy place, before the Temple authorities, and hundreds(?) of devout worshippers coming from what is called the Diaspora … where Jews, exiled originally, were living in many countries but yearning to participate, if possible, in Israel’s great annual feasts, bringing money with them, national enthusiasm, and offering a perfect stage for the proud, largely Sadducee, Temple authorities and ‘guardians’.
Later, Jesus’ disciples, trying to ‘take-in’ such a remarkable event and wondering what Jesus could have possibly meant them to learn from it, found themselves thinking humbly -- for they were Galilean ‘yokels’ in such a concourse of important and motivated people -- but also with quiet confidence and calm expectancy, sure of their Lord’s Personal authority and Scriptural ‘provenance’, so to speak. And we are told that they ultimately found what they were seeking in the Scriptures: words they could now try to understand and learn from, that they might gradually assimilate Jesus’ actions into their appreciation of life and their response to it, as His Apostles.
They remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume Me."
Dear People of God, where is Christian zeal to be seen today? Is it still surviving in our ‘woke’ world? Jesus’ actions certainly did not always call for His disciples’ literal imitation, but they always offered teaching stronger than mere words. Such zeal as Jesus showed was indeed proscribed by the Temple authorities, but human proscription could not dampen the love and concern, the zeal in Jesus’ heart. Can it be that zeal -- consuming love for God -- is too dangerous for contemporary Western Catholicism to handle? Can it be that modern, ‘woke-shadowing’ Catholicism, is too fearful of human authority, too desirous of public approval, to be able to allow any expression of real zeal for God or – what is much worse – to even be able to conceive any real zeal for the Faith of our fathers, especially for the Apostolic faith of our Apostolic Fathers, any consuming love for Our Lord and Saviour, our heavenly Father?
Our question today is about the difference between the zeal of Jesus Himself, openly manifested and clearly expressed, as distinct from the prevailing Western Catholic ethos. Are we afraid today of a zeal that cannot be fully comprehended, that might ‘get us into trouble’, a zeal that cannot be fully and authoritatively controlled because it is a zeal that relates to God first and foremost, above all other considerations. Jesus was filled -- the disciples realized and the Gospel tells us -- with a zeal for God that drove Him to do what no recognized, approved, and responsible, Christian teacher and leader today would dream of doing, and which no modern, official, Catholic teaching would countenance or admit in His disciples.
For officialdom (even in the Church), the work of the Spirit -- because it is humanly unpredictable and difficult both to appreciate and justify by merely human thinking; because it a consuming fire which sometimes comes to burn away human mediocrity and comfortableness; because it is divinely inspired and not humanly conceived; -- the work of the Spirit is becoming something alien and alarming, something increasingly disconcerting for a Catholicism, a Christianity, too centred on human considerations -- accommodating popular human, on-this-earth desires, rather than elevating human aspirations to what is indeed above them, yet what is possible and even promised, to all who will, in divine obedience, seek it.
Jesus Himself made the question of priorities quite clear when, on being asked by a scribe for guidance:
Which commandment is the most important of all?
He addressed the crowd around most solemnly:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength”. The second is this, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself”. There is no other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:30-31)
The two commandments do indeed go together, but there is only one that is first. This was clearly appreciated in earlier times; of late, however, since Mother Church finds herself, in the West especially, in a secularised ‘society’ which enjoys wealth and promotes pleasure, idolizes popularity and worships success, there is an almost overwhelming pressure to ‘promote’ the Faith by accommodating it to modern humanistic tendencies -- why can’t gays and lesbians marry, adopt (buy) children, openly become members of the cloth? How can God want us to cause suffering by holding on to hard doctrines and insisting upon so-called ‘unpopular’ teachings, especially concerning ‘sin’, which today is increasingly rarely committed because it is neither recognized or admitted; nor can it be condemned, for – “Who am I to judge?” -- when the sinner is so frequently said to have a most-understandable human excuse which it is the duty of modern ‘woke charity’ to compassionately recognize, and accept. In these and similar ways the second command is twisted in its application and, as it were, ‘escorted’ into prime place.
Jesus was never in any doubt about which command was first and which second, because He lived His earthly life in response, not to the Mosaic ‘I am the Lord your God’, but in response to, and for the love of, the Person of His beloved Father; for the Honour, the Will, and the Glory, of the Father Who had also sent Him to give supreme and complete expression to what the second commandment can only put into human words, sometimes most blatantly abused, e.g. ‘love’.
People of God, if love of the Father does not predominate in our lives, if the guidance and inspiration of the Spirit is not prayed for as much as human opinion and approval is sought for, we shall in no way be able to proclaim Christ as: The power of God and the wisdom of God; or agree with St. Paul when he says that: The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
The Church in our Western – and Western-influenced -- world today most urgently needs to be more fully committed and much more devoted to GOD our Father, the God Who commissions and commands her to proclaim His Truth: she must proclaim the Good News and help those seeking to understand, but not cajole, wheedle, or ‘persuade’. And that means that we, as children and living members of the Church our Mother, must turn more trustfully to the Father, and whole-heartedly beg that His Holy Spirit come to us ever anew and establish His rule in us and over us, inspiring, guiding, and strengthening us to walk along ways of His Son’s choosing, doing work for His Kingdom, and abandoning our worries and concerns about what ‘the world and its authorities’ may think of us:
I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before Me.
The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. in the temple He found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen. And He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And He told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away; do not make My Father's house a house of trade.”
Where, in our modern Church, could one find any responsible Catholic leader who would, under any imaginable circumstances, behave as did Jesus? And yet, Jesus most certainly meant His actions to be examples for His disciples. Here, He assaulted the money changers; He damaged, and possibly deprived them of, some of their goods; He drove the sheep and oxen out in a far from gentle manner; and speaking of the pigeons He said, “Take these things away”! And, on top of all, He did this in Israel’s most holy place, before the Temple authorities, and hundreds(?) of devout worshippers coming from what is called the Diaspora … where Jews, exiled originally, were living in many countries but yearning to participate, if possible, in Israel’s great annual feasts, bringing money with them, national enthusiasm, and offering a perfect stage for the proud, largely Sadducee, Temple authorities and ‘guardians’.
Later, Jesus’ disciples, trying to ‘take-in’ such a remarkable event and wondering what Jesus could have possibly meant them to learn from it, found themselves thinking humbly -- for they were Galilean ‘yokels’ in such a concourse of important and motivated people -- but also with quiet confidence and calm expectancy, sure of their Lord’s Personal authority and Scriptural ‘provenance’, so to speak. And we are told that they ultimately found what they were seeking in the Scriptures: words they could now try to understand and learn from, that they might gradually assimilate Jesus’ actions into their appreciation of life and their response to it, as His Apostles.
They remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume Me."
Dear People of God, where is Christian zeal to be seen today? Is it still surviving in our ‘woke’ world? Jesus’ actions certainly did not always call for His disciples’ literal imitation, but they always offered teaching stronger than mere words. Such zeal as Jesus showed was indeed proscribed by the Temple authorities, but human proscription could not dampen the love and concern, the zeal in Jesus’ heart. Can it be that zeal -- consuming love for God -- is too dangerous for contemporary Western Catholicism to handle? Can it be that modern, ‘woke-shadowing’ Catholicism, is too fearful of human authority, too desirous of public approval, to be able to allow any expression of real zeal for God or – what is much worse – to even be able to conceive any real zeal for the Faith of our fathers, especially for the Apostolic faith of our Apostolic Fathers, any consuming love for Our Lord and Saviour, our heavenly Father?
Our question today is about the difference between the zeal of Jesus Himself, openly manifested and clearly expressed, as distinct from the prevailing Western Catholic ethos. Are we afraid today of a zeal that cannot be fully comprehended, that might ‘get us into trouble’, a zeal that cannot be fully and authoritatively controlled because it is a zeal that relates to God first and foremost, above all other considerations. Jesus was filled -- the disciples realized and the Gospel tells us -- with a zeal for God that drove Him to do what no recognized, approved, and responsible, Christian teacher and leader today would dream of doing, and which no modern, official, Catholic teaching would countenance or admit in His disciples.
For officialdom (even in the Church), the work of the Spirit -- because it is humanly unpredictable and difficult both to appreciate and justify by merely human thinking; because it a consuming fire which sometimes comes to burn away human mediocrity and comfortableness; because it is divinely inspired and not humanly conceived; -- the work of the Spirit is becoming something alien and alarming, something increasingly disconcerting for a Catholicism, a Christianity, too centred on human considerations -- accommodating popular human, on-this-earth desires, rather than elevating human aspirations to what is indeed above them, yet what is possible and even promised, to all who will, in divine obedience, seek it.
Jesus Himself made the question of priorities quite clear when, on being asked by a scribe for guidance:
Which commandment is the most important of all?
He addressed the crowd around most solemnly:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength”. The second is this, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself”. There is no other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:30-31)
The two commandments do indeed go together, but there is only one that is first. This was clearly appreciated in earlier times; of late, however, since Mother Church finds herself, in the West especially, in a secularised ‘society’ which enjoys wealth and promotes pleasure, idolizes popularity and worships success, there is an almost overwhelming pressure to ‘promote’ the Faith by accommodating it to modern humanistic tendencies -- why can’t gays and lesbians marry, adopt (buy) children, openly become members of the cloth? How can God want us to cause suffering by holding on to hard doctrines and insisting upon so-called ‘unpopular’ teachings, especially concerning ‘sin’, which today is increasingly rarely committed because it is neither recognized or admitted; nor can it be condemned, for – “Who am I to judge?” -- when the sinner is so frequently said to have a most-understandable human excuse which it is the duty of modern ‘woke charity’ to compassionately recognize, and accept. In these and similar ways the second command is twisted in its application and, as it were, ‘escorted’ into prime place.
Jesus was never in any doubt about which command was first and which second, because He lived His earthly life in response, not to the Mosaic ‘I am the Lord your God’, but in response to, and for the love of, the Person of His beloved Father; for the Honour, the Will, and the Glory, of the Father Who had also sent Him to give supreme and complete expression to what the second commandment can only put into human words, sometimes most blatantly abused, e.g. ‘love’.
People of God, if love of the Father does not predominate in our lives, if the guidance and inspiration of the Spirit is not prayed for as much as human opinion and approval is sought for, we shall in no way be able to proclaim Christ as: The power of God and the wisdom of God; or agree with St. Paul when he says that: The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
The Church in our Western – and Western-influenced -- world today most urgently needs to be more fully committed and much more devoted to GOD our Father, the God Who commissions and commands her to proclaim His Truth: she must proclaim the Good News and help those seeking to understand, but not cajole, wheedle, or ‘persuade’. And that means that we, as children and living members of the Church our Mother, must turn more trustfully to the Father, and whole-heartedly beg that His Holy Spirit come to us ever anew and establish His rule in us and over us, inspiring, guiding, and strengthening us to walk along ways of His Son’s choosing, doing work for His Kingdom, and abandoning our worries and concerns about what ‘the world and its authorities’ may think of us:
I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before Me.
