Friday, May 28, 2021 - Eighth week of Ordinary Time - It is I who have chosen you, so that you may go, that you bear fruit, and that your fruit remains, says the Lord - Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 11, 11-26

Sometimes we react to some attitudes of Jesus, saying to ourselves: is this right? We have just heard in the Gospel: Jesus entered the Temple and began to expel those who were selling and buying there and then he overthrew the counters of the money changers. Jesus speaks with simplicity when he teaches: "My house shall be called the house of prayer for all nations." It wasn’t meant to be a den of robbers. The chief priests and the scribes felt targeted by these words and they were looking for a way to put him to death.

The relationship with God through trade and exchange, as we have just heard, was corrected by Jesus; he makes us understand clearly that the relationship with God is lived by grace which is free. The Temple is a house of prayer, intended for the encounter with God, a place for the assembly of believers. The Church here on earth is the image of the heavenly Church, so Jesus wants his house to be a place of meeting and conversation with God and not for anything else. In the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul said that our body is also the Temple of the Holy Spirit. This is to say that God is also within us and our body is a place of relationship with God and not a place to hide all the evil that can destroy the image of God in us.

In order for us to be a true Temple of God, Jesus encourages us to have faith in him. True and pure faith in our heart can do great things that cannot be imagined, even moving a mountain to the sea. Prayer with deep faith is the assurance that we will already receive what we ask for. But besides all this, the heart free from all anger towards others and to which others do not hold a grudge, opens us to God, because he forgives us as we also forgive others. And in the end, we all walk, hand in hand, towards the heavenly and eternal Temple.