There’s a moment from the movie, The Passion of the Christ, which came to me as I prayed with this weekend’s readings. It is the decisive moment for Simon of Cyrene. As we know from praying the Stations of the Cross and reading the accounts of Jesus’ Passion, Simon was the man the Romans pulled out of the crowds to help Jesus carry His cross. In the movie, we get to see a transformation in Simon. At first, he makes it clear that he is being forced against his will to help Jesus, who he obviously thinks is a criminal. But then, as he shoulders the cross with Jesus and sees both His love and compassion and His deep suffering, there is a change. Simon’s change of heart becomes apparent when Jesus falls and the Romans begin kicking and mocking Him. You see the indignation building up within Simon, who finally yells at them to stop and says, “If you don’t stop, I won’t carry that Cross one more step!”
It is a really moving moment. You see how Simon has gone from thinking Jesus is just a criminal to realizing who He truly is. With this realization, he comes to the point of defending Jesus’ dignity against the cruelty of the Romans. He puts himself at risk to stand up for the innocent man unjustly condemned. Simon shows that his heart has been won over by Jesus, and he is now willing to do whatever it takes to defend Him, even though he realizes that Jesus is on the road to a torturous death.
Simon’s forceful defense of the Lord echoes the intensity that we see Jesus exhibit in the Temple in today’s Gospel. He flips over the money changers’ tables, spills their coins, and drives out all the people disrespecting this place of worship. He yells at them to “stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” His Sacred Heart is consumed with righteous anger in this moment because they are profaning the Temple, a place set apart for God and designed for worship and sacrifice.
Jesus is so forceful in defending the physical Temple because He knows that if people misunderstand that Temple, then they will also misunderstand and misuse Him, the new temple. When the Jews ask for a sign to justify His force in the temple, He says, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” And John reminds us that Jesus is talking about the Temple of His Body.
So here we have the tale of two temples: the original Temple of the Jews, a physical place of worship and sacrifice, and the Mystical Body of Jesus, a new type of Temple that will include not just a physical place, but more deeply, the hearts of all Christians.
Jesus is concerned for the protection of His Father’s house, and He knows that we too are meant to be a temple of the Holy Spirit. He knows we will always have the temptation to let lesser things intrude on what belongs to the Father and should be dedicated to Him alone. In the depths of His Sacred Heart, Jesus is that place of worship and sacrifice to the Father. He was and is totally given over to the Father, constantly pouring out all He is to the Father through the Spirit.
This is the amazing gift we have as Christian people, that we get to become little temples in the great and amazing temple which is the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church. For all of us who have been baptized into Jesus’ Body, our hearts have been cleansed in order to set them apart as places for worship and for offering our lives as a sacrifice to our Heavenly Father. But all too often, aren’t we tempted to allow our hearts to become as crowded and bustling with the things of the world as the Temple in Jerusalem was on the day Jesus entered and made a scene.
What, and more importantly, who, we have at our center will be decisive in how we live our lives. Have you ever had an ear infection and all of a sudden found yourself off balance? When things are out of whack in your inner ear, it affects the rest of you as well. So it is with our spiritual lives. When Jesus is not at the center, we become off balance, swinging from one distraction or pleasure to the next but never really being at rest.
This is why the Lord gives us the season of Lent. Lent is our opportunity to right the ship, to join Jesus in making a whip and doing some “holy violence” to those things in our hearts which are crowding Him out of the center of our lives. He calls us to have that radicality about our sins because our hearts, once washed by Him, are made ready for worship and sacrifice, the loving self-giving to our Heavenly Father in the Son and through the Spirit that we were made for.
This is why God gave the Commandments, which we heard in the First Reading. He desired to give the people of Israel – and ourselves – clear external fences to show us what will keep our hearts dedicated to love of Him in the covenant which makes us His family, and to warn us against those things which will throw us into the unbalance of life apart from His covenantal love.
Jesus takes radical action because the Temple is meant to be a place of marriage, of the exchange of covenantal love between God and His beloved people. Instead, they have made it a marketplace, somewhere to simply exchange goods. What a travesty to see a marriage replaced by a market!
I pray that this Lent we have that fire lit within us more fully, that zeal for the Father’s house which we have become in Jesus so that we can be unafraid in defending the center in our lives, that place at our core where God intends to renew His everlasting covenant with each of us. Like Simon, I pray that we become those people willing to put everything on the line to defend Jesus’ place in our souls. He does not force His way into the center, but every day invites us, with His grace and power, to set aside our hearts for Him, to pick up our daily crosses and follow Him. I pray this Sunday that we allow Him to help us clear out everything that keeps us from doing just that.
+ Heavenly Father, thank you for Your love and care for us, for the privilege you’ve given us of being temples of your Holy Spirit. Jesus, help us to keep the temples of our hearts clear of all that would distract us from love of You and love of our neighbor. Holy Spirit, give us courage to drive out those things which threaten to make our hearts marketplaces. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen. +