I developed my homily yesterday about Jesus cleansing of the temple using some of the material from my previous post, and I began by inviting the people to see what the temple area is like today.

“If you were fortunate to go to Jerusalem today–maybe “fortunate” isn’t the way to see it, given the upheaval there now– you would see where the Jewish Temple, the place described in our gospel today, once stood, where Jesus once prayed and where, as our gospel today says, he drove out the buyers and sellers.

A guide would surely lead you to the “wailing wall,” the ancient temple’s western wall, where Jews today pray according to their religious traditions. That wall was part of the platform for the former temple.

A guide would surely point out what an engineering marvel Herod the Great, the temple’s builder, achieved. How did he quarry these immense stones and put them in place!  This place was a wonder of the ancient world.

Your guide would lead you up to the temple mount itself where the ancient temple buildings once stood. He would point out some of the stones from the building burned and leveled by Roman armies in the year 70 AD, when the Romans destroyed the city.

You would also see the great golden domed Moslem shrine that stands in the place of the Jewish temple and the mosque that stands on the platform where the temple once stood.

You would see firsthand some of the tightest security in the world in place. This is a sensitive area where the least incident could lead to a political explosion heard around the globe.

Then, your guide might take you to the southern part of the temple area, where archeologists have uncovered the stairs that Jewish pilgrims took to enter the temple in the time of Jesus. You would see the baths where they purified themselves with water before entering this sacred place.

Surely, your guide would tell you. “Jesus walked up these stairs.” And as today’s gospel says, he walked towards the place where people were buying and selling and created an incident.”

A number of people after Mass remarked that they had never realized what consequences the cleansing of the temple had for Jesus. It was the act that decided his fate.

Some asked also about the role of the Jews in his death.  There are recent stories in the media about this. Is the Catholic Church holding the Jews responsible?

No. It isn’t. I wonder if an analogy can be drawn from our present involvement in Iraq. Should the American people be held responsible for the barbaric torture of people in our war there? I hope not.

I think the temple incident clarifies that question. I believe the guardians of the Jewish temple, the elite who benefitted economically and politically from this important religious place, who were tied to the Roman establishment of the day, were the prime movers who brought Jesus to his death.

It’s important not to lose sight of the fundamental reason Jesus wanted to cleanse the temple. It signified God’s presence and guidance of his people.  First, God is present in us as individuals : “Don’t you know that you are the temple of God and his Spirit dwells in you.” Jesus himself recognized this usage.

But God is present in our world and all its institutions too. The psalms often proclaim that God is king of all the earth. That doesn’t mean just the physical world. Our businesses, our schools, our political structures, our cities and nations are God’s too; he wishes them to be holy and just and true.

It’s a temptation today to give up on our institutions, to criticize and blame them.  We as individuals and the institutions that make up our world are always in need of reform.  We are not perfect, but we must strive to be, guided by God and his grace.