Dear ZENIT Family,
For
this Third Sunday of Lent, the Church proposes to us the Gospel of John
2:13-25. Upon arriving in Jerusalem, Jesus finds that the Temple has
been turned into a market. He made a whip of cords and drove all the
merchantss out of the Temple, overturning their tables and pouring out
the coins. “Do not make my Father’s house a house of trade,” while His
disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for thy house will
consume me.”
Although
the center of this passage is not what we recounted before (it is
the centrality of Jesus’ announcement of the Resurrection when they ask
Him why He has done what He did), I want to reflect with you on an
aspect , which is not only that meditated: I’m referring to what Jesus
did, from where it comes, why it’s something virtuous and also
evangelizing, and how this passage is sometimes used to justify a “holy
ire” on our part.
In
a time when the image of a good-natured God is accentuated, this
passage shows us another facet of the real Jesus Christ. The same Jesus
of the lost sheep, the same Jesus that avoids the stoning of the
adulterous woman, the same Jesus that weeps before the tomb of his
friend Lazarus, the same Jesus who calls a public sinner like Matthew to
be an Apostle is the same one that today shows a very different
countenance and reactions.
To
understand why all this happens exteriorly, we have to go to Jesus’
interior: it’s there that His indignation arises because of what He
sees. It’s the Temple, the place where God has willed to associate
Himself so that His own may feel Him close, to be among them. But His
own have turned the Temple into something else; they have used what
doesn’t belong to them as if it were theirs, and so they have evicted
God from His own house. It is a disposal of the property. An analogy to
understand all this I understood some years ago by a real event that I
learned about in Spain.
It’s
the case of an elderly widow who during the harsh days of the last
pandemic had to leave her home and live with her daughter so that she
could be cared for better and be accompanied. When the most serious
moment of the pandemic passed, she wanted to return to her own home. But
when she arrived she saw that her house, the only thing she had, was
occupied by people who had taken advantage of her (in Spain they
are called “okupas”). She had to go back to her daughter, to a house
that was not suited for another person, so her daughter was
indignant: how was it possible not only that they did that to her
widowed mother but that now the Government also decided not to evict
those occupying a property that didn’t belong to them, a property that
she got with so much effort over the years?
That
daughter is a bit like Jesus: she feels in her interior a similar
process to that of ire, but it isn’t. The love for her mother enables
her to receive as her own others’ injustice. “Holy ire” doesn’t exist.
Ire is a vice and the added qualification doesn’t change it
automatically into a virtue.
Instead, there is holy indignation. Pope Francis distinguished it from ire in his catechesis of January 31, 2024, when he said:
There
is a holy indignation, which isn’t ire, but an interior movement, a
holy indignation. Jesus experienced it several times in His life (cf.
Mark 3:5): He never responded to evil with evil, but He felt this
sentiment in His soul and, in the case of the merchants in the Temple,
he did a strong and prophetic action, dictated not by ire, but by zeal
for the Lord’s house (cf. Matthew 21: 12-13). We must distinguish well:
one thing is zeal, holy indignation, something else is ire, which is
bad. |
The
holy indignation Jesus feels has an origin: zeal for the things of God.
This implies, on one hand, that one is able to recognize with the
understanding that there is something that is God’s and, on the other,
that the will and sensibility cannot remain indifferent when one sees,
in fact, that an injustice has been committed of taking what is one’s
own. Hence, holy indignation not only is a virtue but also a testimony
of evangelization: the things of God are not negotiable, they are
respected. And by having them respected, one sees that God isn’t an idea
or a thought.
The contrary of indignation is indifference, an indifference that in reality is another manifestation of agnosticism.
During
Lent and Holy Week we are given the possibility to reflect on our zeal
for the things of God. The fast prescribed in Ash Wednesday and
Good Friday is no optional but prescribed (if one is of legal age and
under 60 years old). And there can be abstinence from meat on Fridays in
Lent and fasting, prayer and almsgiving are recommended practices for
this period.
Before
picking up a whip to overturn tables and throw others’ coins on the
floor, we must try to think where we have our own tables and coins.
Jesus had the interior freedom to do what He did, not only because of
His ability to recognize against whom He was acting and where there was
an injustice, but also because of His ability to realize that, in His
interior, there was justice in His relationship with God, with the world
and with others. Hence, this passage encourages us to examine ourselves
in all this, an examination that we can make concrete in a question:
How is my interior justice in relation to God?