Sunday Reflections
32nd Sunday of Year C
(Liturgy Feast of the dedication of Lateran Basilica)
We are the living Church
✠ A reading from the holy Gospel according to John 2:22-33
Just before the Jewish Passover Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and in the Temple, he found people selling cattle and sheep and pigeons, and the money changers sitting at their counters there. Making a whip out of some cord, he drove them all out of the Temple, cattle and sheep as well, scattered the money changers’ coins, knocked their tables over and said to the pigeon-sellers, ‘Take all this out of here and stop turning my Father’s house into a market.’ Then his disciples remembered the words of scripture: Zeal for your house will devour me. The Jews intervened and said, ‘What sign can you show us to justify what you have done?’ Jesus answered, ‘Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days, I will raise it up.’ The Jews replied, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this sanctuary: are you going to raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the sanctuary that was his body, and when Jesus rose from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the words he had said.
1. Today, we celebrate the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome ( the cathedral church of the Pope, the Bishop of Rome). It is called “the mother and head of all churches in the world.” It is said to be the very first church to be created after Constatine decreed Christianity as State religion for Roman Empire. Today’s feast is not only about a grand building; it is about what the building represents: the unity of the Church, the holiness of God’s dwelling, and the sacred call of every Christian to be a living temple of the Holy Spirit. The first reading from Ezekiel (47:1-2,8-9,12) presents a picture of a temple from which flows a life-given water that vivifies everything that comes in contact with it. That is the image of what the Church does to the world. The church is supposed to give life to all who come in contact with her.
2. However, the Church, because it is run by men with their limitations and weaknesses, may sometimes fail to fully be what it is meant to be. This is what comes out in today’s gospel. Jesus came to the temple, which we can equiperate to a church today. He noticed that the religious leaders had turned the temple into a marketplace, selling animals for sacrifices and doing currency exchange. Stories had it that priests could disqualify an animal brought for sacrifice as blemish and unacceptable to God if such is not boughtfrom them. To avoid such problems, people prefer to buy directly from the religious leaders who already set up the business of selling sacrificial animals right inside the temple at their own prices. In doing this, the people were exploited and the house of prayer was turned into robbers’ den. On seeing this, Jesus became angry and chased the business people out of the Temple, reminding them the essence the place: house of prayer and worship.
3. This didn’t go down well with the religious leaders. They asked him for a justification for his action. Jesus told them to pull down the temple, and he will raise it up in three days’ time. They thought he was talking of the physical temple, but he was actually referring to his body. In this way, he implied that he is the true abode of God. Prolonging the reflection, we come to understand that the church, the body of Christ, is the temple of God, and so are all the members of the Church. St. Paul explained this further in the second reading (1Cor3:9-11,16-17) by saying that the Christians are the living stones of the true temple, the body of Christ.
4. Today’s celebration recalls the unity of the Church under Peter and invites us to reflect on two things: our attitude to the physical church and our effort to live our life as people who are the abode of the Holy Spirit. On the first point, it has to be noted that the physical Church is the house of God. Some churches have the Blessed Sacrament, which is a physical divine presence in the form of the True Body of Christ, who is alive and active. It is for this reason that certain actions must be shunned in the Church: indecent dressings, eating and drinking, dancing parties, noise making, buying, and selling etc. Once one steps into a church or chapel, one must comport oneself as it is fitting in the presence of God. When the church has a Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle, one must geneflect in reverence before going to take a place, the same while leaving such a church. Many Christians no longer make a difference between the house of God and any other public space. Yet, when they are before highly placed mortals, they comport themselves with honour.
5. In today’s gospel, Jesus made us believe that we too are houses of God because God lives in us. This invites us to treat our bodies with honour. We have no right to use our bodies in a way that will dishonour the divine presence in us. All impure acts: fornication, masturbation, adultery and any other mortal sin can estrange God from our bodies, where he has the right to abide. This belief equally invites us to treat others and their bodies with respect. All the violence actions that hurt others on their bodies, like torture, mutilation, organise traffic and immoderate physical punishment, are all against the divine presence in the human person.
6. As Chrystosome says, we should not adorn the body of Christ, which is the physical structure with gold, while dishonouring the spiritual stones that make up that body, who are our brothers and sisters. We are all the church. We are all the body of Christ, the living Church.
