However, our notion of the Temple is very much coloured by a prejudice that the two Testaments basically represent two disparate concepts of God at odds with each other. The “deity” of the OT is abhorrently unreasonable when contrasted to the therapeutic “divinity” of the NT who is more in keeping with our present-day sentiment. We may have unwittingly imposed this duality into the Temple when in reality it was simply a powerful landmark of God’s “nearness”. After all the Temple was fundamentally the Ark of the Covenant “immobilised” that subsequently was transformed into the central site for Jewish religious activities.
What we perceive to be an emphatic rigidity of the Law only came about after the Temple had been destroyed. After the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman conquerors in AD70, what was left for the Jewish nation as the remembrance of God was the Law. Rabbinic Judaism sought comfort in God’s presence through the Law. It is only natural that when one has lost everything, one becomes conservative and this explains their rigidity.
It is said that during the era of the Schoolmen, speculation being the spare change of the day, these leisurely scholars were interested in divining how many angels could possibly stand on the head of a pin. Their obsession will not seem that antiquated if you consider our fascination with how many bytes can dance on a hard-disc.This allure with measuring the infinite is basically a human attempt to bridge the gap between man and God—as we observe in the effort to construct the Tower of Babel. There is a cohesiveness between the Creator and His creatures in the sense that God is near to us as much as we are fascinated by the Infinite. We crave to be near God. Therefore, Abraham’s sacrifice from last week’s 1st Reading can be read in the light his desire to get closer to God.
Why is God’s nearness to us or our proximity to Him important? The simple answer is salvation. In fact, the basis for sacramental efficacy is “proximity” as illustrated by the faith of the woman with a haemorrhage, “If only I could touch the fringe of His cloak, I would be healed”. Nearness to God is salvific.
God is closer to us that we realise. In cleansing of Temple, Jesus set the stage for an even more dramatic closeness that God will have with humanity. Sadly, the act of claiming His space brought Jesus into direct conflict with the authorities—both religious and secular. It would lead to His arrest and this incident was presented as key evidence at His trial based on the claim that He would destroy the Temple and would rebuild it in 3 days.
The unfortunate situation was that the Jews, for whom the concrete Temple was the focal point of their relationship with God, did not recognise the “Temple’s true Temple”. At the beginning, it was brought up that violence is not the right word to describe Jesus’ action, but symbolic nearness is. The question now remains why did the Jews fail to realise that?
According to the Catechism, following the analogy of faith[1], Sacred Scripture should in totality, be read both literally and spiritually. Our spiritual exegesis will recognise that this brazen behaviour of Jesus should be understood allegorically, morally and anagogically.[2]
Entering the Temple to reclaim its sacred space was an epiphany whereby Jesus was replacing the Temple with His Body. Hence, the Temple was an allegory of Christ’s Body. In the Incarnation, God the Father has become so much nearer to us than both the Temple and the Law can ever be for now He is with us through His Son. As Jesus spoke of the destruction and the rebuilding of the Temple, we catch a glimpse of the anagogical sense of our destiny. He was speaking of the Resurrection and our salvation is modelled upon His Rising from the dead. Jesus is destination, our goal or our objective and where He has gone, we hope to follow.
This brings us to the moral sense of Jesus’ symbolic action. It is found in the clearing out of the traders. Jesus was not interested in challenging the Temple or Roman authorities for sake of it. He was highlighting the corruption that had entered into the Temple system. This is pertinent to us because through our baptism and confirmation, our souls have been configured to Christ, transforming our bodies into temples of the Holy Spirit. Now, we are not halfway through Lent, Jesus cleansing the Temple becomes for us a pause and an exercise of taking stock of how much space we give to God or how much we have crowded God out. Thus, these questions “What corrupts us?” and “What areas in our lives need purification?” are relevant in our spiritual search for salvation.
The point is, in seeking God, in longing to be saved by Him, we encounter also a corresponding desire of God to be near us. In these days of enforced distancing, we console ourselves that we are close to our loved ones. FaceTime or Skype or Zoom. All it takes is a death of a loved one to disabuse us of this myth that virtual vicinity can ever take the place of physical proximity. In cleansing the Temple, God has shown us that He does not care to establish a covenant from a distance. Thus, the only appropriate response is to enlarge the space of our hearts for the Him. The devout practices of Lent—prayer, fasting and almsgiving—are specifically tailored for the purpose of getting close to Jesus. As the true Temple of God’s proximity, He is our destiny. He is our everything. Do not tarry. Let us move closer to Him.
[1] Rom. 12.6. According to the Catechism (cf CCC114), the analogy of faith is defined as the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of Revelation.
[2] Basically, there are two senses when one reads Sacred Scripture, that is, the literal and the spiritual senses. The spiritual sense is further subdivided allegorically, morally and anagogically (CCC115). Further down, the same Catechism uses a mediaeval couplet to explain all these four senses. The letter speaks of deeds. Allegory to faith. The Moral how to act. Anagogy our destiny (CCC118).
