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Domenica 12 Marzo 2023

Third Week in Lent

Word of the day
Gospel of John 2:13-25

Jesus did not overturn... but man has overthrown

He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables, and to those who sold doves he said, "Take these out of here, and stop making my Father's house a marketplace." 
The temple is the symbol of spirituality and Jesus called it: my Father's house. The temple is not important because of the stone with which it is constructed, but for what takes place inside: the people of God meet there to pray and to praise God their Creator. In the temple the people meet and recognize one another as a believing community working in a solidarity relationship to create social justice. 
The temple represents Jesus himself, the son of God, who came to live with us on here on earth to reestablish a new alliance with humanity. Jesus is the divine "place" where humanity can find God again and the roads to sprituality and to faith (Jesus himself identified himself with the temple: "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up").
The temple also represents the heart and the soul of man, which is God's house, where God wishes to live.
That is why Jesus almost becomes infuriated in the face of the sacrilege and the mockery carried out in the temple. That is why he overturned the tables of the money-changers.
In all honesty it is not Jesus who overturns, Jesus wants to bring back the truth which was overturned and to rectify a situation of confusion and total deception. It is man who overturned the real meaning of things, who overturned the value of spiritual and earthly realities. It is not Jesus who becomes violent making a whip out of cords and lashing out against the rot; the real violence was committed by human beings who transformed even the most sacred, precious, and divine things into a pigsty of economic and political interests.
Man has overturned and turned upside down the sense of spirituality and of faith, he has exploited the need for God and for spiritual values for economic purposes and polticial control. The Father's house has become the house of masters, of the powerful, of the rich.
Jesus' proposal and divinity were themselves overturned. The Gospel has been manipulated to protect interests and human aims, traditions, and human habits, educational systems, and false values that have nothing to do with the Gospel. The Gospel itself is at times presented as grey and sad, as a theoretical proposal far from the daily reality of the people.
Man has overturned  the value of the human soul and the power of the spirit. He has transformed them into caverns of superficial pleasures where there is no joy or peace.