Friday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 501

 

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.”

 

Throughout his gospel, Saint Luke stresses the favor that God shows to the poor and lowly. Where Saint Matthew says, “Blessed are poor in spirit,” Saint Luke says simply, “Blessed are the poor.” Mary’s song in the first chapter, upon arriving in Jerusalem and Elizabeth’s house, sounds revolutionary in many ears:

He has shown might with his arm,

dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart.

He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones

but lifted up the lowly.

The hungry he has filled with good things;

the rich he has sent away empty.

Luke tells us that the Infant is announced to poor shepherds near Bethlehem; and revealed to the devout Simeon and Anna in Jerusalem. The Roman and Jewish authorities know nothing about the Baby who will rule with an iron rod. Only the least among us hear the good news.

 

So we cannot be surprised that Mary’s son is angry when he enters the temple in Jerusalem and finds a cacophony of bartering, trading, buying, and selling. “My house” he says, “shall be a house of prayer!”  He must clean his house with a fury like that of the Maccabean army, which rebuilt and purified the temple in 164 BCE.

 

Some people, recalling this and similar passages in the Bible, and innumerable scandalous stories about the Church and money, conclude that a truly spiritual religion should have no money. They might take up a collection for the poor and needy and assign the most competent, trustworthy persons to distribute the funds, but they will build no infrastructure to maintain the faith community. Indeed, the church has survived some difficult periods when it had no buildings, as during the brutal Japanese persecution, and in the German death camps.

Although Jesus may have had a home in Capernaum, he certainly didn’t use it. He remarked, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” He maintained his homelessness even as he was crucified outside Jerusalem and buried in a borrowed grave. 

We find neither church buildings nor church construction in the Acts of the Apostles, but they often meet indoors. Philemon, who claimed Onesimus as his slave, certainly had a house large enough to accommodate the local church. The word basilica originally designated large, splendid homes with ballrooms.

Thirteen centuries later, Franciscans would confront the problem of money when Saint Francis died. Brother Elias is still despised among some friars for his campaign to build one of the most important Christian shrines in the world, the basilica in Assisi. Elias believed the Spirit of the saint required a beautiful temple with an original design and pioneering frescoes to describe the revolutionary vision of the Poverello. Were the friars to settle into the old structures their customs and habits would inevitably conform to the old styles.

The Franciscan experience, in particular, reminds us there is no escaping money and its messiness. Although it is measured with numbers it is liquid and those who handle it often get their hands wet. But since the Word of God has made his dwelling among us, we should not hesitate to use money, property, and many forms of infrastructure to promote the Word of God.

With that said, we hear Jesus’s prophetic warning. Custodians of this world's goods, we are only obedient stewards of property and administrators of the mysteries. We own nothing; we claim nothing.