topleft05.jpg (18208 bytes)HOMILY
The Third Sunday in Lent (B)
15 March 09
 


 

It’s getting pretty close to that time of year called “Spring Cleaning.”  I know this because I pruned the crepe myrtles on Thursday afternoon and noticed new growth just beginning to show on the branches.  That’s how I know almost infallibly that spring is “just around the corner.”

Within a couple of weeks, we’ll be opening the windows during the daytime, letting in the all of the sun and fresh air, dusting all of the goldenrod pollen from the furniture, washing the floors, and vacuuming the carpets.  But, that’s just the beginning of this annual ritual.  Dusting and vacuuming is one thing.  There’s also organizing all of the accumulated clutter and disposing of (or donating to charities) items that have outlived their usefulness or grown too small to be useful to us anymore unless we go on a long-term diet.  When we complete this annual ritual, the closets will be neatly arranged.  The furniture and flooring will glisten in the sun.  And, everything will be in its proper place…and, by that, I don’t mean “having been put out in the garage.”

Like our homes, our lives also require an annual spring cleaning.  Perhaps our ritual includes getting a physical, visiting the dentist, or re-engaging in some exercise regimen, even if it’s just taking a good walk a couple of times each week.  Spring is a great time to take a bike ride along the Schuylkill River a couple of times each week.

Yet, as neat as our homes and lives may be, this doesnt necessarily mean that our spiritual lives are in proper order, just as all of that accumulated stuff in the garage doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ve completed the annual spring cleaning or our apparently good health doesn’t mean we don’t need a physical.  Slowly over time, pernicious attitudes can creep in and clutter up our souls, to the point that we don’t even see all that has piled up.  This mound can become so humungous that it actually keeps us from seeing anything but the mound and, even though we may pattern our days according to the Ten Commandments (eight of which we heard in today’s first reading), we’re just not growing spiritually.

In today’s gospel, we heard a familiar story, that of Jesus cleansing the Temple.  The story draws our attention to Jesus’ righteous anger on display at the Templewhat Jesus calls his “Father’s house”because the Temple has been turned into a marketplace.  The business being transacted in the Temple’s outer precincts wasn’t in and of itself evil; in fact, those transactions were necessary for worship in the Temple.  But, as with most things human beings dream up or invent, the “law of unintended consequences” likely came into play, and those transactions got way out of hand, a for-profit enterprise rather than providing assistance for worship.  What originally was quite acceptable grew far beyond the good originally intended and ended up offending anyone who possessed religious sensibility.  So far out of hand, in fact, that Jesus found it necessary to cleanse the Temple, that is, to get things back to the way God intended for the Sabbath and Temple in and from the beginning.

Considering today’s gospel from this perspective, what is important is not the fact that Jesus cleansed the Temple, as important as that may be.  Instead, what we need to focus upon is what motivated Jesus to cleanse the Temple, because that motivation provides a standard for us to understand better and to judge the current state of our spiritual lives.  Then, we can make a more accurate assessment concerning the amount of spiritual cleansing we need if we are to get back to being the person God created us to be in and from the beginning.

So, today’s question is: “What motivated Jesus to cleanse the Temple?”  The gospel itself provides the answer: “Zeal for God’s house will consume me.”

If anyone of us is to be cleansed spiritually, we need to consider those attitudes that seemed good when we first adopted them, but have grown over time into a mound that now not only clutters up our spiritual life to the point that we don’t even see what has piled up.  It is sort of like a mound of dirty clothes and bathroom linens piling up in a bedroom that someone doesn’t even see, even though the pile blocks the way to the bathroom.  What I am drawing attention to is worse, however.  This mound of attitudes we have adopted has become so humongous that it is impossible for us to grow spiritually.  You know those kinds of attitudes, the “If I knew then what I know now, I’d never have done that.  But, I didn’t...” kinds of attitudes.

One attitude many of us knowingly or unknowingly has adopted is “secularism.”  What this means is that we keep God out of our daily lives.  I’m not talking simply about things like failing to say daily prayers, not to read spiritual literature, or not to perform good works on behalf of other people.  Failing to do those things certainly keeps God out of our daily lives.  Rather, the type of secularism I am discussing roots itself more deeply in our souls and has everything to do with what motivates us.  That is, having adopted secularism as an attitude, does “zeal for God’s house” motivate everything we say and do each and every day?

Quite likely, zeal for God’s house doesn’t motivate everything we say and do each and every day.  In and of itself, that is not unusual.  But, since I’m talking today about engaging in spiritual housecleaning, the question is: “Why not?”  Might it be because secularism has become so influential in our lives that, for all practical purposes, it has become a “mound” that blocks out the possibility for a place for God in our lives?  You know, the “I’m too busy” attitude or the “There’s simply no time in the day (or week)” attitude.

We can very easily assess the degree of secularism and lack of zeal for God’s house present in our lives.  The easiest way is to listen to how, in our own words, we typically describe other people’s motives.  For example, how often do we question their motives, attributing to these people the worst possible motives?  This attitude flows forth from our mouths when we say things like: “I know why she did that.  Well, the best I can say is, ‘At least she’s consistent’.”  Or: “He’s always been like that.  What else could you expect.  I knew it from day one?”

Just this past week, Pope Benedict XVI responded to the secular media who had misjudged his motives and caused great amount of harm in the area of reconciliation within the Church and in ecumenical relations, especially with the Jewish people.  As if Benedict XVI were Lucy Ricardo, he wrote a letter to the world’s Catholic bishops to ’splain why he lifted the excommunication of a schismatic group whose members did not accept the authority of the Second Vatican Council and one of whose members—a validly but illicitly consecrated bishop—had denied the Holocaust on the BBC.  The Pope began his letter:

Some groups…openly accused the Pope of wanting to turn back the clock to before the Council: as a result, an avalanche of protests was unleashed, whose bitterness laid bare wounds deeper than those of the present moment. I therefore feel obliged to offer you, dear Brothers, a word of clarification, which ought to help you understand the concerns which led me and the competent offices of the Holy See to take this step. In this way I hope to contribute to peace in the Church.
 

What had happened is that, in announcing his lifting of the excommunication imposed by Pope John Paul II, word quickly spread via the Internet.  Not understanding the Pope’s motivation (or, perhaps not caring one whit what his motivation was, or worse yet, seeking to contort his true motivation by presenting a lie that, if repeated enough, is believed by many to be the truth), many in the secular media promoted their ideological and self-serving explanations.  Of this, Benedict XVI wrote:

I have been told that consulting the information available on the internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on.  I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to that source of news. I was saddened by the fact that even Catholics who, after all, might have had a better knowledge of the situation, thought they had to attack me with open hostility…. At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate.  And should someone dare to approach them – in this case the Pope – he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint.
 

Isn’t that just how we feel when other people, using an entirely ideological or self-serving standard, judge us guilty of something we never intended, treat us intolerantly and hatefully, unleashing the full force of their scorn without misgiving or restraint?  Even if that is true, that isn’t my point today.  My point is: Isn’t that precisely how other people feel when we use an entirely ideological or self-serving standard, judge them guilty of something they never intended, treat them intolerantly and hatefully, and unleash the full force of our scorn without misgiving or restraint?  Does that not provide all the evidence needed to prove we have adopted a secular attitude?

So, what exactly motivated the Holy Father to lift the excommunication that caused such a furor among the secular media?  He wrote:

So if the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church’s real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small.  That the quiet gesture of extending a hand gave rise to a huge uproar, and thus became exactly the opposite of a gesture of reconciliation, is a fact which we must accept. But I ask now: Was it, and is it, truly wrong in this case to meet half-way the brother who “has something against you” (cf. Matthew 5:23ff.) and to seek reconciliation?  Should not civil society also try to forestall forms of extremism and to incorporate their eventual adherents – to the extent possible – in the great currents shaping social life, and thus avoid their being segregated, with all its consequences?  Can it be completely mistaken to work to break down obstinacy and narrowness, and to make space for what is positive and retrievable for the whole?
 

What Pope Benedict had attempted to do was to lead the schismatics back into unity in the Church, a task he called “the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time.”  In light of today’s gospel, “zeal for God’s house” motivated the Pope.  He was working to cleanse the Church of a schism dividing the body of Christ and to make reconciliation impossible.

Secularism, as I have defined it, drives zeal for God’s house from our souls and replaces it with zeal for self-justification.  In the end, our words betray us as we assert why we are so good and why everyone else is so bad.  We pile self-justification upon self-justification, destroying not only the possibility of reconciliation with others, perhaps even in our own families, but we also inhibit if not destroy the possibility for our own spiritual growth, all the while falsely believing in our spiritual superiority.

Assessing the situation in which the Pope suddenly found himself, he noted: “The real problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident destructive effects.”

Lent is the season of the Church year for us to engage in spiritual housecleaning so that zeal for God’s house motivates everything we say and do.  That requires changing the attitudes that motivate our behavior, the type of change the Gospel of Mark calls “metanoia,” the change of mind that gets beyond debating the letter of the law—that is, who’s right and who’s wrong and why—by immersing ourselves in the spirit of the law—that is, what authentic love of God and neighbor requires of each and every one of us.

Let us work to cleanse ourselves of all those attitudes that clutter up our souls to such a degree we cannot honestly assess what we need to discard, so that, like Jesus, zeal for God’s house motivates everything we say and do.  Then we will grow spiritually, having worked to cleanse God’s dwelling place, the Temple of the Holy Spirit that is our soul.

 

 

 

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