Let Us Go Up to Purify the Sanctuary and Rededicate It

November 20, 2009

Friday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time

By Melanie Rigney

“Now that our enemies have been crushed, let us go up to purify the sanctuary and rededicate it.” (1 Maccabees 4:36)

“Yours, O Lord, are grandeur and power, majesty, splendor, and glory. For all in heaven and on earth is yours; yours, O Lord, is the sovereignty; you are exalted as head over all.” (1 Chronicles 29:11)

Jesus entered the temple area and proceeded to drive out those who were selling things, saying to them, “It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.” (Luke 19:45-46)

Piety

Lord, I sometimes quake to think of You looking into my house. Help me to clear the temple of the things—impetuousness, insecurity, anger, and self-doubt—that create a distance between us. I humbly ask that You help me to make room within for a true place of prayer.

Study

Jesus Christ Superstar Clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g77AcTbjFo

Whether you’re of an age that you can recite every single word of dialogue and song to Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) or just don’t get the obsession, I defy you not to get the shivers at 1:50 into the above link. It’s when Ted Neeley (Jesus), who’s plenty angry about what the moneychangers and others are doing in his temple, pauses from overturning tables to shout, “My temple should be a house of prayer. But you have made it a den of thieves. Get out!” (It’s right up there with the moment two years earlier in Billy Jack when Tom Laughlin calmly says a racist act makes him go berserk… and then does just that. But that’s a whole ’nother column.)

It can be a little disconcerting to think of Jesus being even righteously angry, not patient and kind and loving and turning the other cheek. Yet Luke tells us that he drove out the merchants and flat-out insulted them about what they were doing.

Imagine, then, God’s anger with the way we treat the temple He has given us. We overeat. We drink too much. We gossip. We fret. We fight. As humans, we embrace mentally, physically, or emotionally any number of the seven deadly sins each week. We desecrate the temple.

How then, to return ourselves to a state that is pleasing to God? Today’s first reading from Maccabees describes in great detail the way the brothers purified the sanctuary: with sacrifices and burnt offerings, with praise and prostration and music. They repaired the gates and celebrated the altar’s consecration for eight days. It was a joyful time. The temple was back in God’s desired state.

In the same way, God loves to see our temple in its desired state. When we resist temptation and use the gifts of intellect, strength, compassion, and love, it is a joyful time. We purify ourselves with His help in prayer and in service. We celebrate, as David did, the Lord’s “grandeur and power, majesty, splendor, and glory.” And we don’t have to be in a cult classic or a YouTube video to do it. We just have to be ourselves… and trust God to help us turn out the thieves.

Action

Work on tidying up your temple with a priest, spiritual director, or a trusted friend.