Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it: Comment P. Jorge Miró

Father Jorge Miró shares with Exaudi readers his commentary on today’s Gospel, Sunday, March 3, 2024, titled “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it.”

***

Faith is not a theory that is learned, but a life that is enjoyed. It is having discovered that God loves you – he has created you out of love – and calls you to live a life of friendship, intimacy, and communion with him: a story of love and salvation. And he calls you to live the faith not in a solitary way, but in his people, which is the Church. It invites you to walk with these people, with the specific brothers that the Lord has given you, as a gift, as precious help. God has not created you for loneliness but for relationship, communion, and donation.

The first reading reminds you that the Lord is the only God, who acts in history in your history. It reminds you that only He can give you life to the fullest. That is why the Lord invites you not to fall into the trap of idolatry, which is asking for life from someone who cannot give it to you: money, power, success, and comfort, … Who are you asking today’s life?

How many times have we experienced this! We have sought life in idols and we have found emptiness, dissatisfaction. Because God has created you with a heart so big, that only He can fill it.

And furthermore, God, who loves us, to help us live, gives us the gift of the Ten Commandments, which will be fulfilled in the Sermon on the Mount. With the Commandments, God does not want to oppress you or bother you. Quite the opposite: the Commandments are the path to true freedom: the law of the Lord is perfect and is rest for the soul, the commandments of the Lord are true and entirely just. God loves you and wants you to be happy, and this is the way to happiness!

And this is true wisdom, which Saint Paul tells us about. This is the truth that makes us truly free.

With the expulsion of the merchants from the Temple, Jesus is signaling that he begins a new time, announcing that He is Lord! Jesus is the new temple, the place, the encounter between man and God.

Jesus Christ is announcing that the old Covenant is ending, to give way to the new and eternal Covenant: crucified and resurrected from the dead, seated at the right hand of the Father, he has been constituted High Priest, who intercedes for us eternally (cf. Catechism 1137, 1348).

This Word calls us to a very deep conversion.

He calls us to live with a new heart, to be born again, of water and Spirit (cf. Jn 3:5), to worship God, in spirit and truth (cf. Jn 4:24).

True conversion is not a “cosmetic surgery,” which only changes appearances; but a true “transplant” of the heart, which the Holy Spirit will do, if you let him.

A new heart, that can live in the will of the Lord, which is pure and eternally stable.

A new heart, which does not need the signs that the Jews seek, nor the wisdom of the Greeks, but rests in Jesus Christ, who is the strength of God and the wisdom of God.

A new heart, that lives with the passion of a lover, proclaiming with word and life that Jesus Christ lives and is Lord, the only Lord!

A new heart that can attest that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son and that everyone who believes in him has eternal life.

Let yourself be loved by God and respond to his love!: Your life will change. If you believe, you too will have eternal life.

 

Come Holy Spirit! (cf. Luke 11, 13).

​