A house of prayer.
Jesus is coming to clean house.
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.” And every day he was teaching in the temple area.
Today I want to reflect briefly on three different houses of prayer.
The Jewish Temple of old was a house of prayer because it was God’s house, the dwelling place of his glory on earth. Jewish liturgical life revolved around sacrifice at the Temple, the place prescribed for them to worship God aright. It is for these reasons that Jesus is so outraged to see his Father’s house converted into a place of barter and fraud.
Christian churches today are houses of prayer. Any church—from the humblest grass-hut chapel in rural Africa to the finest gothic cathedral in Europe—is the home of God’s presence. Catholics should be keenly aware of this, because we believe that Jesus dwells in every Catholic church really, truly, substantially, in the Blessed Sacrament. A church is a holy sanctuary in where we are welcomed to commune in prayer, song, and sacrament with the God who made heaven and earth.
But there is a third kind of house of prayer—each and every human soul. God made man to be a house of prayer, a creature ordered towards communion with the Creator. But when we sin, when we oppose God’s will, we transform God’s house into a den of thieves—Satan and his wicked angels are the despoilers of man’s dignity as God’s dwelling place.
There is no place at all for sin in God’s house. Christ will not compromise on this point. He wants purity—wholehearted devotion to God. And so everything contrary to the right praise of God needs to be driven out of the temple of the soul.
Jesus is coming to clean house. If we’re wise enough to let him in, he will dwell in our souls and through grace make this simple dwelling into God’s house—a house of prayer—once more.
The daily scripture readings can be found on the USCCB website.
What a simple yet important reflection. I appreciate the image of Jesus not willing that anything other than right praise in my soul. Thank you, Thomas.