Third Sunday of Lent

Third Sunday of Lent Reflection
Sister Belinda Monahan, OSB 
Board of Directors and Spiritual Advisor

Readings: 
Exodus: 20:1-17
Psalm 19:8, 9, 10-11
Second Reading: 1 Cor 1:22-25
Gospel: John 2:13-25

At first today’s gospel seems incongruous in this Lenten season.  We might find Jesus’s actions—bordering on violence—almost unseemly and wonder how they relate to “repenting and believing the Gospel” as we were exhorted to do on Ash Wednesday.  But Jesus’s actions are a reminder that what we are to focus on in Lent—indeed what we are to focus on always—is, as the psalmist reminds us “Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.”  

In removing the money changers and the sellers of animals from the temple, Jesus is doing more than venting righteous anger.  He is reminding us that—at all times, but especially during worship—we need to be about God’s business, not the practice of holding up traditions for their own sake.   
          
The first reading enumerates the ten commandments, the original set of laws which form the core of the relationship between God and the Hebrew people.  And subsequently us.  Jesus, as an observant Jew, adhered to these practices and upheld many of those traditions.  He was, after all, in Jerusalem for the Passover.  And both his words and his actions call us to do the same.
          
But his actions in the temple in today’s Gospel caution us against blind adherence to traditions that might get in the way of following God.  Not all traditions should be upheld.  
          
Being able to distinguish between the traditions which lead us, all of God’s children, toward God and the traditions which do not, is not always easy, but Jesus’s words in the today’s gospel provide a path toward clarity.  He refers to the temple as “my Father’s house,” and calls us to the same, familiar, intimate relationship with God.  As we too, listen to and for God, we too will recognize when God is speaking the “words of everlasting life.”  ​