In today's Gospel passage, Jesus shows anger because the Temple leaders are taking advantage of the people. According to the Mosaic Law, the Israelites must travel to Jerusalem periodically and have various sacrifices offered on their behalf in the Temple, many of which involve animals.
However, the Temple leaders make a financial racket out of the necessary sacrifices. The pilgrims cannot just use any animals. They must use unblemished animals specifically raised for Temple sacrifice, which they must purchase upon arrival. But they cannot use just any money. They must pay with the Temple coins in order to buy animals for the Temple sacrifice. So they, we might say, are fleeced twice (no pun intended). They must exchange their money at an unfavorable rate and then buy the sacrificial animals at inflated prices.
Jesus condemns the religious leaders who seek to enrich themselves through the dispensation of God's grace. God's grace is not a commodity to offer for sale. God's love is offered freely. We see in the New Testament that religious leaders may receive just compensation for the work they do in the service of God. But they may not use God's love for their own material enrichment.
Nor should our own personal relationship with God be transactional. We cannot buy God's grace for ourselves. But since the time of the Protestant Reformation, Catholics have been accused of trying to do just that, of trying to buy God's grace with good works. But this is a misunderstanding of Catholic practice.
The Catholic understanding is that God's grace is poured out freely upon each of us. We do not earn or buy God's love. However, our good works, performed for ourselves or for others, are an expression of our relationship with God. Our good works show that we are living out God's love in our lives from day to day. Our good works also predispose us to receive God's love all the more.
In my marriage, I do not buy my wife's love by doing something good for her. Our relationship is not transactional in that she does something good for me only in proportion that I do something good for her. Instead, the relationship is one of mutual self-giving in love. The good that I do shows my love and reinforces the bond between us. So it should be in the way we relate to God.
As we continue our long Lenten journey, let us commit ourselves to the practice of our good works all the more, to prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and many others we can undertake. Let us not do so to buy God's grace, but to open our hearts ever more fully to his love and to be ever more fervent channels of his love to the people in our lives.
||
The readings for the Third Suday of Lent, Cycle B, are:
Ex 20:1-17
Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 11
1 Cor 1:22-25
Jn 2:13-25
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Photo Credit: The Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where the biblical Temple once stood By Zoltan Abraham (c) 2016.