Jesus drives the money-changers out of the Temple
Lord's Day Reflection: Anger issues? Try a little holy
zeal
As the Church celebrates the feast of the Dedication of the
Lateran Basilica in Rome, Jenny Kraska offers her thoughts on the day's Gospel
reading, which tells how Jesus cast the money-changers out of the Temple.
By Jenny Kraska
In Sunday’s Gospel, we see a side of Jesus that can be
unsettling: His righteous anger. He enters the Temple, the dwelling place of
God, and finds it reduced to a marketplace. With zeal for His Father’s house
burning within Him, He overturns the tables, drives out the money changers, and
declares, “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a
marketplace.” (John 2:16). His passion shocks us – but it also calls us to
examine our own hearts and the world we have built around us. What tables in
our lives need overturing? What spaces meant for prayer and peace have become
cluttered by distraction, greed, or complacency?
These questions are especially fitting on the Feast of the
Dedication of the Lateran Basilica; the cathedral church of the Bishop of Rome
invites us to reflect on what it means to be the living Temple of God. The
Lateran Basilica stands as a physical sign of God’s dwelling among His people,
a visible reminder that the Church – both the building and the Body – is meant
to be a place where heaven touches earth. Yet the true temple of God is not
made of marble and mosaics but of living stones – you and me. As St. Paul
reminds us, we are God’s temple, and His Spirit dwells within us (1 Cor 3:16).
Just as Jesus cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem, He desires to cleanse and renew
the temples of our hearts, that we might be worthy dwelling places of His love.
Jesus’ anger in the Temple was not the outburst of wounded
pride, but the expression of divine love for what is holy, pure, and true. His
zeal was not destructive, but redemptive. It was a purifying fire meant to
restore what had been profaned. In our world today, we too encounter countless
forms of desecration: truth twisted into manipulation, the dignity of the human
person diminished, violence excused, and faith treated as a commodity. The
uncertainties and anxieties of our age – war, polarization, and the fragility
of peace – tempt us to despair or indifference. Yet, Christ’s zeal calls us not
to retreat, but to act – to defend what is sacred, to rebuild what has been
broken, and to purify our own hearts so that they may again be true temples of
His presence.
Righteous anger, when rooted in love, is not sin. It is the
stirring of conscience against injustice. It is the holy unrest that drives us
to work for peace, to advocate for the vulnerable, and to resist apathy. Zeal
for God’s house consumes us when we can no longer stand idly by as His children
suffer. Like Jesus, our anger must be disciplined by mercy and our zeal guided
by faith.
May our zeal for God’s house burn with the same purifying
love that animated Christ. And may our righteous anger against all that
desecrates human dignity lead us not to destruction, but to renewal – in our
hearts, our Church, and our world.
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