The temple he was speaking of was his body.
Flannery O’Connor, a Catholic writer from Georgia during the 1940’s and 50’s – who died of lupus at age 39 – has established herself beyond question as among the foremost American short story writers of the 20th century. One of her stories has some pertinence to today’s Cycle B Gospel reading – if you can stretch your imagination a bit. The story is called “A Temple of the Holy Ghost”. It starts off with the arrival of two teenage girls at the home of their aunt and younger cousin for an extended weekend. They no sooner arrive than it’s off with the uniforms of their boarding school and on with the lipstick, red skirts, loud blouses and high heels – and lots of giggling about their being Temple One and Temple Two. The aunt asks them what all this “Temple One and Two” talk is about and they explain that an old nun at their school reminded them that they were both Temples of the Holy Ghost – so that if some boys tried to get loose with them they should ward them off with: “Stop sir! I am a Temple of the Holy Ghost!” Again much giggling – until the aunt said, “I think you girls are pretty silly. After all, that’s what you are – Temples of the Holy Ghost.”
Now that being the case, namely that each of us is a Temple of the Holy Ghost (as explicitly stated in St. Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians), then today’s Gospel, in which Jesus drives out all the noise and clatter that spoiled the Temple of Jerusalem in his day, may pertain to you and me as the Temple each of us is! And what does today’s Gospel describe? Jesus strides into the Temple precincts of old Jerusalem and, using a cat o’ nine tails, drives all the sheep and cattle tethered for sacrifice and all the cashiers out – saying, “Stop turning my Father’s house into a Walmart” – a commercial emporium (which is the actual Greek word used in the text).
Applied then to us (and this being the season of Lent when we are encouraged to purge our souls for Easter), Jesus would chase out all that distracts us from housing God’s presence, being God’s habitat in this valley – and in this world.
Which raises the question: in what way as God’s Temple have I become a trafficker, a vendor and consumer of trivia, gossip, opinions, politics, demagoguery, “bloody” sacrifices (figuratively speaking)? Well for one thing there is the barrage of commercials I must wade through for everything under the sun: “needs” I don’t need – on radio, TV, and in bundles of newsprint that ultimately go into the recycling bin. Then there are the editorials, the pundits, the “authorities” . . . the secular prophets forecasting the future. All so invasive there is hardly time for one to think of reading a passage from the Gospel or the writings of Flannery O’Connor.
Lent is a time to let Jesus stride into your Temple and mine – with all his grace and profound wisdom – to clear out our minds, imaginations, to get us thinking and doing the way God thinks and does. Fasting? Fine, give up wine; live on bread and water if you want. But if you must fast, really fast – clear out the intruders of our age of too much information and too little insight. Leave a place in your day for a period of silence wherein you may sense God’s closeness – translating into a prayer those old lyrics (mystically altered) of Paul Simon:
Hello darkness, my old friend / I’ve come to talk with you again / Because a vision softly creeping / Left its seeds while I was sleeping / And the vision that was planted in my brain / Still remains within the sound of silence. Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again