Word to the Wise
Friday, November 19, 2021 - Friday in the 33th Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Macc 4:36-37, 52-59 and Luke 19:45-48]On the anniversary of the day on which the Gentiles had defiled it, on that very day it was reconsecrated with songs, harps, flutes, and cymbals. All the people prostrated themselves and adored and praised Heaven, who had given them success. [1 Maccabees] Jesus entered the temple area and proceeded to drive out those who were selling things, saying to them, "It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves." [Luke]
The temple of Jerusalem was the center of Jewish faith and worship. In Jesus' day, it was under renovation which had lasted 40+ years! It had political as well as religious significance because King David had managed to bring the "twelve" tribes under one umbrella centered in Jerusalem with one temple. (The eventual establishment of the Samaritan temple at Gerizim was a continual source of conflict between Jews and Samaritans.) The religious activity of the temple required both animal and vegetable sacrifices that were established in the Torah (Pentateuch). The result was a kind of marketplace in and around the temple that supplied the necessary items for sacrifice. This could range from cattle to wheat and olive oil. The sounds and smells would no doubt have been spectacular. In addition, there was a temple tax for maintenance which all Jews were expected to pay. This came under Jesus' notice in a couple of incidents - the coin in the mouth of the fish and the "Widow's Mite." Jesus' action in disrupting the ordinary business of religion was a motivating event to the Jewish authorities who wanted to get rid of him.
The complete destruction of the temple by the Romans in 70 AD resulted in a total reorientation of Jewish worship away from animal/vegetable sacrifice to synagogue worship, kosher life and meditation on the Torah, which is referred to by scholars as "rabbinic Judaism." For the Jews who accepted Jesus, this had serious consequences because their preaching about him as the Messiah brought them into conflict with other Jews. The observance of Torah became an issue for Gentile converts. St. Paul would come to apply the idea of the temple to the individual of faith as the "temple of the Spirit." The Gospel According to John has Jesus' "replacing" the temple with his own Body as the focus of worship.
All of this might seem ancient history but for the fact that we Christians seem to have inherited the notion of "sacred space" as something separate and apart from the human person and have constructed grand (and magnificent) temples as testimony of our faith. These temples, at least in the USA, have come to be, by virtue of their growing emptiness on Sundays, barometers of our faith in sacramental worship!!! Without the personal faith of believers, temples become museums. There is much ahead of us to renew Catholicism in the USA! AMEN