In today’s Gospel, Jesus cleanses the temple of buyers and sellers; predicts his death and resurrection; and proclaims that a community of disciples will replace the Temple in Jerusalem.
Yes, we are that community of disciples today. We are that living temple of God, the Church, wherein resides the fulness of Christ.
Now many of us have a GPS tech device that gives directions.
It’s a powerful metaphor for Lent. Some people seem spiritually off-track. But we have a “voice” to guide us. It is our conscience, informed by the bible, the authoritative teachings of Catholic Christianity, and the wise counsel of holy women and men as we navigate through the challenges of life.
So often, people get off-track by living in the future. Some imagine, My life will begin when I get a new job, when my son or daughter gets well, when I retire. Life will begin in the future.
Naomi Levy, in her book Hope Will Find You, wrote: “I had been
promising myself there was a future waiting for me. And just then something
snapped inside my soul: This is my
future: the present, the here and now. She realized, “We were fooling ourselves
into thinking our lives hadn’t begun. But all of us have to learn to live
inside the imperfect lives we have here
and now.”
These days before Easter are a time for deciding what we believe to be truly important in our lives, and then acting on our beliefs today. For the only thing we can count on is today. We can’t redo yesterday, and we don’t know about tomorrow.
Our faith proclaims that life has meaning, and that there is indeed an all-good, compassionate and merciful God who seeks us out in our everyday experiences. This God became incarnate in Jesus and opened up to us eternal life through his death and resurrection. And yes, God is alive among us today by the power of the Spirit, especially in the sacramental life of our global Catholic community.
This is the mystery of the triune God: a God who is one yet diverse, stable yet dynamic, transcendent yet immanent!
We can participate in God’s triune life here and now and also hereafter by living a life of regular prayer, by fasting from attitudes and behaviors that jeopardize our relationship with God and one another, and by living a life of generous service to one another.
That is our Lenten message for us, disciples of Jesus. I think this quote, attributed to Stephen Grellet, sums it up:
I shall pass through this world but once:
any good therefore that I can do
or any kindness that I can show to any human being,
let me do it now, let me not defer or neglect it
for I shall not pass this way again.
Try not to live a life of regrets.
