what am I looking for?

Homily

3rd Sunday of Lent B

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

7 March 2021

AMDG +mj

What am I looking for? 

Well, for starters, I shouldn't end this week's pivotal question with a preposition.  So if you are looking for better grammar, I've failed you right off the bat.  .

Still, the question remains.  What am I looking for?  

Last week I confessed I'm looking to have it all.  I only want to add things to my life, never subtract!  My life looks like the scene Jesus opens a can on in today's Gospel.  It's a noisy and cluttered bastion of consumerism.  I'm not focused on the one necessary thing, the right worship of God, that puts me in right relationship with everything else.

So I'm going to change my answer.  I'm not looking to have it all.  I'm looking to cleans my temple.  I want to feel sharp in mind, body and spirit!

Jesus cleanses the temple so that He can be asked about the temple of His body!  In Jesus, the temple, its priesthood, its altars and sacrifices are to be fulfilled all in Him, through the three days of His paschal mystery. 

Yet there is a 4th day, prefigured at the Last Supper, when the temple of Jesus' body passes over into the temple of His disciples. The cleansing of the Jerusalem temple gives way to the cleansing of Jesus the new temple by His passion.  That passion passes over in the Eucharist into your temple, and mine.

I'm looking for this temple, to be cleansed!  I want to be sharp!  Through a good Lent and holy confession, I want to offer Jesus a clean space, the space of a pure mind, courageous heart, strong will and chaste body.

I want to offer him a blank slate so that He can write not just the ten commandments of stone but the new commandment of love, right on my open heart.  I want to offer a temple that cane transformed into the power and wisdom of God!  

That's what I'm looking for this Lent.

What are you looking for?