First Reading Commentary
The Ten Commandments are a summation of the natural law. Actually, one could reduce these ten phrases
to the two principles of charity as Jesus did: “You shall love the Lord your
God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind”
and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37 , 39).
The Author of the Ten Commandments is clear throughout by the title,
“Your God.” That title alone intimates
that there should be a willingness on our part to entrust our heart and soul to
Him.
The Commandment against carving idols can certainly be taken literally
but in this day and age carving is perhaps a symbolic word for embracing. God’s intelligent creation has become
secularized in today’s world. Money,
power, owning the latest and greatest in technology are some examples of the
idols we carve today. They are not idols
within themselves, but when they become something we can’t part with under any
circumstances, we then remove God from the Center of our life and place Him on
a shelf or in extreme cases, eliminate Him completely.
The Sabbath does not mean that for one day per week we should focus on
God and then push Him aside the other six days.
The Sabbath is the day that we worship God with greater fervor, reserving
that day for Him – worshipping Him and resting in Him. The apostles authorized Sunday as the
Christian Sabbath in order to commemorate the mysteries of our Savior’s
Resurrection.
“A long life in the land” is a reward that is temporal in nature but in
Christian reflection it points to an eternal reward. Our enemy prowls around like a roaring lion,
and because of that, the definition of killing in civil law is no longer
absolute. Defenders of abortion do not
believe that it is the killing of humanity’s most innocent and defenseless
creatures. But Jesus exposed our real
enemy during His forty days in the desert.
Our enemy is not the Supreme Court or Catholic, pro-choice
politicians. Our enemy is the one who
tempted Jesus unsuccessfully. Unfortunately,
human beings are not so strong and are capable of succumbing to diabolical
schemes. And what better place for him
to prowl around than in the human institutions that govern God’s people!
Humanity has gone from one extreme to the other when it comes to
adultery. In the ancient world adultery
was punishable by death. Today, “what’s
the big deal” seems to be the prevailing attitude. We’ve lost that sense of sin. And while it’s fair to say that the enemy’s
prey on humanity is at the root of immorality, we, however, are not blameless
because the enemy would not be so influential if we had a closer union with our
Lord. But Lent calls us to exactly
that! Lent is a time to recognize that
the relationship with God must take the highest priority -- always. Our sojourn in the desert could be an
unfavorable plight if we choose to walk through it without Jesus.
Second Reading Commentary
Things are
not so terribly different today than they were when Saint Paul
Human
wisdom, a gift from God, unfortunately can be arrogant. A failure to understand the ways of God is
something that is true of every human being.
No one fully grasps God’s ways but arrogance dismisses it as untrue. Humility, however, accepts it in faith
because if we can daresay that God has any foolishness, He is still wiser than
any human being that has ever existed or will exist. And if we daresay that God has a weakness, He
is certainly more powerful than our greatest strengths.
Gospel Commentary
The divinity of Jesus is not known by the people at this point. If they know anything about Him, it is that
He is the Son of Joseph and Mary. How
then, did Jesus succeed as virtually a one Man army by forcing them all out of
the temple area? Saint John Chrysostom
deduces that there had to be something in our Lord’s conduct that was
divine. Since no resistance was offered
by the moneychangers, they must’ve been unknowingly held back by the Hand of
God.
Origen, one of the early Church writers, considers this event a
miracle. Because it is Lent, though, and
our Lord motions us to come to Him, that we may have a more intimate union with
Him, consider this story interiorly. In
the One Person of Jesus Christ, there is the human will fully conformed to the
divine will. Jesus is showing us what He
will do if we are conformed to the divine will.
Our soul is a temple; and we all know that some are more conformed to
the will of God than others. But that is
the gift of free will which our Lord does not invade because that would not be
love. But when we are committed to the
Lord, Jesus is the Hand of God that holds back what is detrimental.
Remember that our soul is God’s property, not our own. In this Gospel story, the temple is also
God’s property as Jesus refers to it as “My Father’s house.” Thus the human will of Jesus desires what God
desires, and because of that, the divine will of Jesus casts out what is not of
God. Unlike Jesus, however, we don’t
always conform to the will of God.
That’s why we have the Sacrament of Confession. Our temple is eternal; it is not made of
bricks or stone but by the Hand of God.
And when we exercise our free will by conforming to the will of God,
then God will see to it that our temple is a place fit for Him to dwell.
Jesus does something very physical in casting out these
corrupt businessmen but the spiritual and mystical value of what He did is far
more important for us to grasp. The soul
of man is the house of God; and Jesus, as prophesied by the Book of Psalms, is consumed
with zeal for our soul.
Another prophet also proclaims something pertinent to this:
“My house shall be called a house of prayer” (Isaiah 56:7). Hence, the
soul is designed to have a close union with the Lord which comes through
prayer, and very intimately from the Eucharist.
Today there is evidence of a highly secularized culture
obsessed with the need for material goods and wealth. And now headlining the news are the
insecurities about our financial future.
Has the soul of man become a marketplace instead of the house of prayer
for which it was made? Should we reflect
on this Gospel and conclude or at the very least suspect that the core of our
troubles as a people of God are rooted in our attraction to temporal joys and
seemingly secure enticements, instead of turning towards Jesus and seeing Him
as our eternal security?
