Friday, November 19, 2021

 Friday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time

(I Maccabees 4:36-37.52-59; Luke 19:45-48)

In all estimation the Jerusalem Temple, when it stood, was the center of Israel’s life.  It was twice constructed.  Solomon built a lovely structure in the tenth century B.C.  This building was destroyed by the Babylonians toward the beginning of the sixth century.  When the Israelis returned from captivity in Babylon fifty years later, they rebuilt the Temple.  This second structure was expanded by King Herod before Christ was born.  It stood less than a century more. The Romans, putting down a Jewish rebellion, almost obliterated it.  What is left, the west or “wailing wall,” remains a place of pilgrimage for Jews.

Both readings today focus on the holiness of the Temple.  In the first, the Maccabean brothers celebrate its rededication after being purified of desecration by Greeks and Jewish apostates.  Jesus symbolically does the same as he drives out merchants.  The Temple was holy because it contained the divine presence from the Scriptures stored in its inner chambers.

Christians do not have a single structure with the significance of the Jerusalem Temple.  The sacrifice of Christ to atone for the sins of all is re-presented in all churches which retain the apostolic succession.  Equally true, we see every baptized person as a kind of Temple.  At Baptism the person receives in his or her soul the Holy Spirit, who is God.  It is our sacred duty to keep the Temple of our soul pure and holy.

 

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