Cleaning the temple
After his first military victories over the Syrians, Judas Maccabeus wanted to restore legitimate worship. He had the desecrated Temple cleansed and consecrated anew, rebuilt the altar, and offered the sacrifice in accordance with the Law.
Jesus drove out the merchants from the Temple and it might be a good time to ask ourselves: What has the Lord to drive out from us to make us better Christians? What stands in the way of being closer to him in the life of every day? What matters for us Christians is that we are attached to the Lord and close to the people he has entrusted to us. Then, we can worship him with our whole life.
Reading: 1 Maccabees 4:36-37,52-59
Judas and his brothers summed up their victory.
“Behold our enemy has been pulverized. It’s time to return to the holy city and the Temple. We need to straighten things out and clear things up.”
Next day, before dawn, they arose at five. It was the twenty-fifth day of
Kislev, the ninth month on the Jewish calendar, in year 148 of the Greek calendar. They offered sacrifice according to the Law on the new altar on what happened to be the second anniversary of the day the Gentiles had made the Temple unclean.
Now the whole place had been renovated. Music was heard again, with canticles and psalms accompanied by harps, lutes, and cymbals. All the people fell on their face, adored God, and for eight days the joyous dedication celebration continued with burnt offerings and sacrifices of salvation and praise. They decorated the face of the Temple with golden crowns, ornamented the portals and side rooms, hung the massive doors. Great joy was written on the faces of the people; there wasn’t a Gentile fingerprint left in the whole place. Judas, his broth- ers, and everyone else in Israel decreed that dedication day should be preserved and observed with joy and gladness in the same season every year for eight days within the range from the fifth to the twentieth day of Kislev.
Gospel: Luke 19:45-48
Going into the Temple he began to throw out everyone who had set up shop, selling everything and anything. He said, “It’s written in Scripture,
My house is a house of prayer;
You have turned it into a religious bazaar.”
From then on he taught each day in the Temple. The high priests, religion scholars, and the leaders of the people were trying their best to find a way to get rid of him. But with the people hanging on every word he spoke, they couldn’t come up with anything.
Prayer
God our Father,
we often turn our hearts
into houses of pride and greed
rather than into homes of love and goodness
where you can feel at home.
Destroy the temple of sin in us,
drive away all evil from our hearts,
and make us living stones of a community
in which can live and reign
your Son, Jesus Christ,
our Lord, for ever and ever. Amen.
