Word to the Wise
Friday, May 29, 2015 - Friday in the 8th Week in Ordinary Time
[Sir 44:1, 9-13 and Mark 11:11-26]Therefore I tell you, all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours. When you stand to pray, forgive anyone against whom you have a grievance, so that your heavenly Father may in turn forgive you your transgressions." [Mark]
Jesus' words take place in the time immediately following his entrance into Jerusalem before his passion, death and resurrection. At the center of this incident is his action of scattering the money changers and sacrificial animals in the temple and his cursing of the fig tree. These two actions are linked symbolically. Jesus will replace the temple with himself. If there is no way to pay the temple tax or make sacrifice, the temple cannot operate! It no longer serves its purpose because Jesus has come. Its time is past, just as the time for figs was past and the tree becomes a living parable.
Instead Jesus exhorts the disciples to turn in prayer to God and have faith in the one God has sent. This prayer must be matched by merciful forgiveness. Jesus' message is not new in terms of what was known of the prophetic messages of Jeremiah and Isaiah about placing confidence in the temple instead of in the Lord. This can be a warning to us all about getting too wrapped up in "churchiness" in which we concentrate on ritual and other "churchy" things and forget about the one for whom all of this kind of thing is meant to remind us! AMEN
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