Saturday, March 10, 2012 Reflection for the Third Sunday of Lent Year B


Readings: Exodus 20:1-17 God spoke all these words. He said, ‘I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. ‘You shall have no gods except me. ‘You shall not make yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything in heaven or on earth beneath or in the waters under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God and I punish the father’s fault in the sons, the grandsons, and the great-grandsons of those who hate me; but I show kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.‘You shall not utter the name of the Lord your God to misuse it, for the Lord will not leave unpunished the man who utters his name to misuse it. ‘Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath for the Lord your God. You shall do no work that day, neither you nor your son nor your daughter nor your servants, men or women, nor your animals nor the stranger who lives with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that these hold, but on the seventh day he rested; that is why the Lord has blessed the sabbath day and made it sacred. ‘Honour your father and your mother so that you may have a long life in the land that the Lord your God has given to you. ‘You shall not kill. ‘You shall not commit adultery. ‘You shall not steal. ‘You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. ‘You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his servant, man or woman, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is his.’ Psalm 18:8-11 You have the message of eternal life, O Lord. The law of the Lord is perfect, it revives the soul. The rule of the Lord is to be trusted, it gives wisdom to the simple. You have the message of eternal life, O Lord. The precepts of the Lord are right, they gladden the heart. The command of the Lord is clear, it gives light to the eyes. You have the message of eternal life, O Lord. The fear of the Lord is holy, abiding for ever. The decrees of the Lord are truth and all of them just. You have the message of eternal life, O Lord. They are more to be desired than gold, than the purest of gold and sweeter are they than honey, than honey from the comb. You have the message of eternal life, O Lord. 1 Corinthians 1:22-25 While the Jews demand miracles and the Greeks look for wisdom, here are we preaching a crucified Christ; to the Jews an obstacle that they cannot get over, to the pagans madness, but to those who have been called, whether they are Jews or Greeks, a Christ who is the power and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. John 2:13-25 Just before the Jewish Passover Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and in the Temple he found people selling cattle and sheep and pigeons, and the money changers sitting at their counters there. Making a whip out of some cord, he drove them all out of the Temple, cattle and sheep as well, scattered the money changers’ coins, knocked their tables over and said to the pigeon-sellers, ‘Take all this out of here and stop turning my Father’s house into a market.’ Then his disciples remembered the words of scripture: Zeal for your house will devour me. The Jews intervened and said, ‘What sign can you show us to justify what you have done?’ Jesus answered, ‘Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews replied, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this sanctuary: are you going to raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the sanctuary that was his body, and when Jesus rose from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the words he had said. During his stay in Jerusalem for the Passover many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he gave, but Jesus knew them all and did not trust himself to them; he never needed evidence about any man; he could tell what a man had in him.


Reflections:
*Homo faber we are thought by the philosophers to be.  Man works, is born to work, lives through his work.  He makes himself better by his work.  We are even born with inlaid instruments.  We have voices for singing, hands for making and head for those ideas which innovate and make the world a better place to live in.  We work, we build, we create.
*Our contemporary society highly encourages work.  We get our bread and butter form the work of our minds, hearts and hands.  We build our homes and our building and our common areas and places.  We beautify our surroundings with our ideas.  We make this world a better place to live in.
*Since childhood all of us are trained to engage our minds and hearts for the construction of whatsoever that may be useful to us and to the community.  We are educated and disciplined in the arts of building and construction.  Although only a fraction of us such as the engineers and architects dedicate their lives in direct building of edifices, all of us one way or another build and create.
*Our readings today challenge us to build another kind of building, another kind of edifice.  We build on earth, let us build on heaven.  Our bodies are made of flesh yes, but we have souls too, inseparable from our bodies.  The obedience to the Ten Commandments of Exodus chapter 20 helps us build ourselves, our families, our communities and the world in general.  It is true that these commandments directly guide us by encouraging us to avoid what is evil but inversely we can understand them as invitations, even injunctions, to do what is right by ourselves, our neighbors and our God.  A life lived by these commandments is surely a life lived in the light of the Lord and far from the darkness of sin.
*Some people tend to think that to focus only on spiritual things is really foolishness.  If you say to your family that you have no house here on earth because what you are really trying to build is a magnificent house in heaven, they will probably make fun of you.  It is good and proper to look for success on earth, especially because many may be depending upon your labor and profit.  But the point here is this, that we can not only think of our buildings here on earth but we have to think also and even more of our future in heaven.  And some even, with a greater degree of courage and love, dedicate their lives almost exclusively only on things of heaven.  They are examples for all of us.  Their foolishness is wisdom for God and therefore for our emulation as Saint Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians chapter 1 reminds us.  It is better to be temporarily called foolish on earth and be perpetually wise on heaven than the inverse of that.
*Finally John chapter 4's message is spot on on what is being set upon here.  As we build a temple fitting for our God, a cathedral worthy of Him for example, it is His overpowering desire that we build our Temples, our bodies, fitting for God, for the Holy Spirit to dwell upon us.  In this way, we are also preparing our abode in heaven.