Tag Archives: Catholic Church

The Cleansing of the Temple

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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.

What does the Pope really think?

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We need more opportunities to hear the Pope when he lets his hair down (and a good head of hair he still has),  One place to hear him is in his informal meeting with the priests of Rome, usually at the beginning of Lent.  Rome is his diocese, after all, and he doesn’t  mind exploring questions with the priests who work its streets.

John Allen has that dialogue translated from Italian at the National Catholic Reporter site: http://ncronline.org/node/12551

Evolution and Intelligent Design

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Nova’s presentation  “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” was on last night at PBS.

The program, about teaching evolution in the public schools, reenacts the 2005 trial that pitted the school board of Dover, PA, against plaintiffs who objected to the theory of Intelligent Design being presented along with the theory of evolution in their local school district.  The court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.

It’s interesting that Nova chose Dr. Kenneth Miller, a biologist from Brown University and a Roman Catholic to make the case for evolution and argue against the theory of Intelligent Design on its website:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/defense-ev.html

Miller is articulate and thorough explaining both sides. In the television presentation he makes the point that truth is one; religion and science don’t contradict each other, but they approach reality in different ways and are complementary.

I liked his answer to people who object to being descended from monkeys.

“Well, they’re right, they’re not descended from monkeys. They’re not descended from chimps or monkeys or gorillas or any other living organism.
The essential idea of common ancestry is that ultimately all living things on this planet share common ancestors if we go far enough back into the past. So, for example, to take the case that people talk about all the time, we share a common ancestor with all primate species. This means that we’re related, by having a single ancestor somewhere in the past, to monkeys, gorillas, chimpanzees, and so forth.

But the idea of common ancestry goes way deeper than simply saying we’re related to monkeys. We’re in fact related to all mammals. You go farther back, we are related to all vertebrates. And, ultimately, we are related, if you go far enough back, to every living thing on this planet. The almost universal nature of the genetic code, the fact that all life depends upon DNA, all of these things are evidence of this commonality of ancestry, if we go far enough back in time.”

In today’s readings, St. Ambrose offers what faith says. A great promise has been made to us by God. Called to be heirs with Christ, we share in his resurrection. But not only human beings receive this promise.  According to St. Paul writes, “creation also looks forward to this revealing of the sons of God.”  It too is a “son of God as it were,” groaning in bondage, till it shares in this glory. (Ambrose)

Together with the children of the church, and “all who are worthy of seeing the face of God,” creation waits in hope to rise in incorruption.
Our 4th Eucharistic Prayer expresses this same hope:

Then, in your kingdom,

Freed from the corruption of sin and death,

We shall sing your glory

With every creature, through Christ, our Lord, from whom all good things come.

We need more information on evolution from the Catholic Church, so it’s good to see a big conference on evolution in Rome sponsored by the Gregorian University, Notre Dame University and the Pontifical Council of Cuture for early March. More details  http://www.evolution-rome2009.net/

Is There a Perfect Church?

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In his life on earth, Jesus did much good, but he also left much good undone. Listen to St. Cyril of Jerusalem speaking about the miracles of Jesus:

“At Siloam, there was a sense of wonder, and rightly so. A man born blind recovered his sight. But what importance is this when there are so many blind people in the world? Lazarus rose from the dead, but even this only affected Lazarus. What of those countless numbers who have died because of their sins? Those five miraculous loaves of bread fed five thousand. Yet this is a small number compared to those all over the word who are starved by ignorance. After eighteen years a woman is freed from bondage of Satan. But are we not all shackled by the chains of our sins?”

The saint stresses the mystery of the cross, which is Christ’s lasting gift to us.

Isn’t it true, though, that we want a Savior who creates a perfect world instantly, leaving no suffering, no questions, no evil left to plague our world?  Why didn’t he recreate paradise when he came among us?

At least, why didn’t he create a perfect church?

We’d like a church that’s perfect. Not a pilgrim church that plods its way through time, but a church that knows everything, can do everything, and can judge everything. Be nice to be part of a church like that. Or would it?

So, why shouldn’t a pope blunder in his relationship with the Jews by dealing with a crazy bishop? Popes have blundered before. Native Americans and native peoples may have a better understanding and appreciation of the environment than Christians do; feminists may appreciate the role of women in the world better than the established church does.

Isn’t there room for a “learning church?”

The disciples were “slow to understand” when they walked with Jesus on the way to Emmaus. The scriptures don’t say they knew it all when they left the table after seeing him.

We’re back to the mystery of the cross. We’re always back to the mystery of the cross.