Zeal for Our Father's House

Today we celebrate the Feast of the dedication of the first Christian Basilica, the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. It’s the Cathedra, the seat of the Pope, and it’s very majestic – not quite on a par with St Peter’s, but still pretty impressive. If you’ve been blessed to make one of Fr. David’s Italian pilgrimages, you’ve seen some stunning, ancient, and magnificent cathedrals, true monuments, and tributes to the glory of God. If you’ve ever walked into St. Peter’s, St. Paul Outside the Walls, or St. John Lateran, you can’t help but be filled with awe. Truly they could only be inspired by the greatness of God.

But, as magnificent as all those basilicas are, they are NOT the Church. They’re just a building, a place the CHURCH gathers sometimes. Because WE are the Church, WE are the Temple, along with all our baptized brothers and sisters throughout the world. We tend to forget that sometimes. But that’s what we hear from St. Paul in our second reading: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person, for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.”

So, if WE are the Church – all of us, all together – we might want to take a look at how we’re taking care of that Church. Because Christ certainly will! “Zeal for your House will consume me,” the Gospel says. We don’t have money changers and merchants set up in the courtyard outside, true. But are we taking care of our brothers and sisters as we could? How’s our interior life, our prayer life, and taking time to listen for God? Are we lost in politics, the squabbling over how we worship, and who’s welcome at the altar? Jesus came to the Temple and found a church that had forgotten what it was about, why it was there. So he made a whip of cords and, in His zeal, set about some aggressive “spring cleaning” to make the Temple what it was called to be. He looks for us to live our faith with that same zeal for OUR Father’s house, Christ’s Church here on earth, and what WE’RE called to be. So maybe it’s time for us to take a hard look around, and do some spring cleaning of our own.