Today’s first reading speaks of the re-dedication of the temple of Jerusalem profaned by Antiochus Epiphanes, who had placed in the same temple the desolating sacrilege, an idol. This rite is the origin of the current Hebrew feast of Hanukkah, the feast of the light.

A similar scenario is seen in the Gospel passage of today. Arriving in Jerusalem, Jesus performs an action reserved to the Messiah: cleansing the Temple. The purpose is to restore the purity of worship and the re-establishment of a nationalist theocracy (as described in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah). The Master certainly purified the Temple, but not according to the messianic expectations of the time. His action addresses the essence of the Covenant: as the prophets denounced and announced, worship of God cannot be separated from the practice of “what is right and what is just”. The house of sacrifices must become now the house of prayer. Whoever gains or gets rich on the skin of the people “in the name of God” has no right to remain in the Temple, that is, has no right to enter into a relationship with God, to be part of his house.

This reminds us of what St. Jerome wrote in his sixth letter: “Do they not know that they have offered themselves to Christ and they are in His house and eat of His bread and allow themselves to be called servants of Christ’s poor? How, therefore, do they want to do the above without love, without humility of heart, without bearing with their neighbor, without looking for the salvation of the sinner and praying for him, without mortification, without shunning money and women’s face, without obedience, and without the observance of our rules?”

Dear brothers and sisters, following Christ does not mean that our desires will be fulfilled always. In following him, we must find the courage to “cleanse our Temple”(our body), from a relationship with the Father founded on the “do ut des”, a Latin sentence that means: “I give you something so that you give me something”, that is; a commercial relationship with Him. Hence, we are invited to enter into another kind of relationship with Christ, which is founded upon free gift.

In this relationship with Christ, there are no offers to be made to obtain protection, blessing, indulgence, success in business, good health in exchange. With Jesus we learn to enter into a true relationship with the Father in order to look like Him. God does not seek devoted faithful, but children that are alike to Him. Therefore, we are invited today to outgrow the religion founded on sacrifice to a mature faith founded on love.