The readings for the Third Sunday in Lent (Year B) May be found at:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030721-YearB.cfm
Just when you think you know someone.
As I was reflecting on the words of St. John, I remembered an image I saw a few years back that had a caption that read as follows:
If anyone ever asks you ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ Remind them that flipping over tables and chasing people with a whip is within the realm of possibilities. I just love that.
We all think we know Jesus don’t we? I mean we get a picture of Him in our minds, His personality, how He carries Himself and who He is. We see Jesus as warm, kind, gentle, forgiving, compassionate, loving - not an angry bone in his body.
We don’t see Jesus as angry or zealous or as having the full range of human emotions, even though He was fully human and was just like us in every way except sin.
But clearly based on His reaction in the temple, Jesus had a temper.
So Jesus isn’t always this soft, give me a hug, everything is ok as long as you’re true to yourself kind of person.
He is strong - a carpenter before there were power tools and a man who withstood unspeakable pain and torture to die so that we could live.
So why did Jesus suddenly grab a whip and flip tables?
Put simply, the temple was His Father’s House - the temple was God’s property. It was the place where God made himself known and received their worship. But instead of reverence, Jesus found a mess.
Now there was nothing new about the buying and selling in the temple - that had been going on for a long time - for generations. But just because something has been going on for a long time doesn’t make it right.
The temple was supposed to be a sacred place - a place where God was present and Jesus found it unrecognizable.
So I ask you to consider….are our souls any different than the temple?
We each have a soul.
We were made in God’s image and likeness and we belong to Him.
At times in our life, our souls have been in a state of grace, when we were baptized or when we last made a good sacramental confession.
On that day our soul was pristine, but then we made a choice here and compounded it with a choice there. These choices led to sins and then maybe areas of neglect or indifference and possibly grew into a pattern of sinful behaviors. Once sins became a habit - maybe we felt like we were broken beyond repair.
That’s exactly what the devil wants, by the way, for us to feel lukewarm, hopeless and to give up. If we do that - he wins.
But we have a way to get right with God and we don’t have to flip tables or chase people with a whip to do it. All we need is to make a good sacramental confession. That’s it.
That’s when we confess our sins to Jesus through a priest who hears our confession and where Jesus absolves us from our sins.
We need confession so that we can have a proper communion at Holy Mass.
If we receive communion and haven’t been to confession in a long time, chances are we are only making a bigger sin. Just like the temple - a mess created over time.
If you do nothing else this Lent, make a good sacramental confession.
If you don’t want to go to your parish priest, there are other Catholic Churches or Our Lady’s Chapel downtown. It’s anonymous, you can even change your voice if you like, if that makes it easier to do, but whatever you do, do it.
I can guarantee you that know matter what you confess, the priest has heard worse.
It’s not enough to say, I am a good person, I confess my sins directly to God - NO, Jesus left us the sacrament of confession as a way to get right with God and we don’t make one as often as we need to - present company included.
It’s Lent for a few more weeks.
You still have some time to make a good sacramental confession.
If you do that, the tables will be turned, the spiritual mess will be washed away and your soul will be returned to a state befitting of God -
and no matter what you confess -
there will be no whips involved - I promise.
