Daily Gospel Reflection
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November 9, 2021
Since the Passover of the Jews was near,
Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves,
as well as the money-changers seated there.
He made a whip out of cords
and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen,
and spilled the coins of the money-changers
and overturned their tables,
and to those who sold doves he said,
“Take these out of here,
and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”
His disciples recalled the words of Scripture,
Zeal for your house will consume me.
At this the Jews answered and said to him,
“What sign can you show us for doing this?”
Jesus answered and said to them,
“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
The Jews said,
“This temple has been under construction for forty-six years,
and you will raise it up in three days?”
But he was speaking about the temple of his Body.
Therefore, when he was raised from the dead,
his disciples remembered that he had said this,
and they came to believe the Scripture
and the word Jesus had spoken.
“Mr. Kunst, I thought you said that Jesus never sinned?”
Every year, I receive some form of this question whenever reading today’s gospel. Whether it is my elementary, middle, high school, or adult students of faith, this passage is a challenge. It strikes us as inappropriate and intemperate. I have gotten pretty angry before, but over-turning tables level of angry? How could Jesus do this and also be considered the incarnation of an all-loving God?
Christ is always teaching with his words and his actions. In overturning those tables, Jesus did not sin. Instead, he showed his love for those who were making his Father’s house into a marketplace. In his example, Christ’s omnipotent and omnipresent love for humanity calls us to contemplate the concept that St. Augustine described as “rightly ordered love.”
The money-changers represent inordinate love of created goods. Are we going to devote love to an item of the world above our love of God? In today’s passage, the disordered love is honoring money above the respect and love owed to a sacred space, but there are many things we do in our lives that Jesus tries to overturn out of love for us.
God loves us with everlasting love, and we are called to value our relationship with God above all things. Today let us prayerfully reflect on what actions, habits, or priorities in our lives we might value more than we should. Let us ask Jesus to overturn them in our hearts so that we may rightly order our love, prioritizing God above all else.
Prayer
Father, just as your Son cleaned the temple from all that hindered worship of you, so he wishes to cleanse us, each a temple of the Holy Spirit, from all that keeps us from offering you full-hearted praise and thanksgiving. Grant us the grace and trust to allow Jesus to undertake this cleansing within us. Amen.
Saint of the Day
When we think of the seat of Catholicism, images of St. Peter’s in Rome come to mind. In reality, the seat of Catholicism is actually the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome because this is the official church that the pope presides in as bishop of Rome. It is this capacity—the bishop of Rome—that makes the pope head of all bishops. Thus it is this church, where the pope presides, that stands as the mother of all churches around the world.
This church was the first one built after Constantine ceased the persecution of Christians in 313. For years, the Laterni family held the land where the church now stands, which gives the basilica its name. The basilica was dedicated in 324 and that is where popes lived and presided until the 1300s. Four ecumenical councils of the magnitude of Vatican II were held there.
The basilica was originally dedicated under the name of Most Holy Savior, but in the sixth century took on the names of John the Baptist and John the Evangelist. Now it is known as the Basilica of St. John Lateran, which rolls all of this history together.
Beneath the altar of the Lateran basilica stands a small wooden altar upon which, according to tradition, St. Peter celebrated Mass. The Lady Chapel of Notre Dame’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart contains something similar: the ornate altar in that chapel holds a piece of wood that comes from a portable altar used by St. Peter.
The term, "basilica," was first applied to buildings in ancient Rome that served as an public court for hearings. Early Christians had to gather in secret in caves and private homes for worship, but when the faith expanded into the empire, the faithful were allowed to build larger assembly spaces. They did not want to associate their faith with pagan temples of the time, so they turned to the basilica as an architectural model for a public gathering space. The traditional basilica has a long nave and a central, raised area that stands at the head of the space. Christian churches often add a transept to make the space in the shape of the cross, such as the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on campus.
Today, the term "basilica" is applied to a Catholic church of distinction, or one that is a place of pilgrimage. A basilica is not synonymous with the term "cathedral," which is the church where the diocesan bishop presides in each diocese. There are more than 1,500 basilicas around the world.
The Basilica of the Sacred Heart on campus was dedicated in 1888 as the Church of the Sacred Heart—Pope John Paul II raised the church to the status of basilica in 1992. It is the mother church for the priests and brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross in the United States—it is where these men make their final vows and are ordained priests.
Celebrating the feast of this sacred church is a way to honor the communion experienced by the whole Roman Catholic Church. It also reminds us of an essential truth: our temples of stone stand as symbols for the Christian community. A church is a place where God lives, and God also dwells in the community that assembles there. Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians (chapter 3) that each of us is a living stone in the temple of God.
Lord Jesus, cornerstone of the Church, bless us on this feast of the dedication of the Lateran Basilica!
Image Credit: The featured image of the Lateran Basilica is in use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Last accessed October 10, 2024 on Wikimedia Commons.
