Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome
My wife and I recently completed the process of selling our previous house, buying a new house, and moving. For anyone who has ever gone through that experience, I’m confident that you can relate to the unique combination of frustration, chaos, and excitement that it can bring about in your life. Slowly but surely, my wife and I have begun to settle in and transform this new house into a home. It’s an interesting feeling. The papers have been signed, the boxes are unpacked, and our mail is sent to our new address, but it still doesn’t feel like home yet. It begs the question, “What will it take for this house to become a home?”
It’s easy for me to fall into the “as soon as…” temptation to answer the question. It’s a temptation that I’ve fallen into many times already. It goes like this: As soon as I cut the grass, then it will feel like home. As soon as we finish painting, then it will feel like home. As soon as the pictures are on the walls, then it will feel like home. In reality, no exterior or visual transformation will suffice. Only an interior transformation brought about by the daily, living, and loving presence of my wife, my son, and our life together will turn this house into a home.
Today’s first reading from 1 Corinthians refers to each believer as “God’s building” and a “temple of God.” This is more than just a clever analogy, but is a profound and mysterious reality. Truly, in virtue of our baptism, we are each made into temples of the Holy Spirit- tabernacles of God’s presence. Not because we deserve it, but because God wills it, we are a house for the Lord and God continues to build upon the foundation He has laid. With this thought in mind, we are challenged as disciples to not just be a house for God, but a home.
The Gospel of John portrays a zealous and passionate Lord Jesus as He enters into the temple area, the house of God. We read how He drives out the money-changers with a whip and overturns their tables. This is quite the biblical Extreme Home Makeover. Jesus is intense! He’s uncompromising! His zeal for His house consumes Him. We can sense the frustration He must have felt, desiring to make His house into a home. Recalling that we too are temples of God, we are reminded of God’s passion and zeal for us. Therefore, we should approach this truth like we approach a Tabernacle or how we would enter into a Catholic Church- with deep familiarity and intimacy, but never casualness. Jesus doesn’t want to simply paint our walls through a dramatic, but ultimately unsatisfying external transformation. The Lord wants to turn over tables in us! He demands that we set our pretentiousness aside, surrender our pride, and look beyond the exterior. To make us His home, He offers us an interior transformation brought about by His daily, living, loving, and intense presence, particularly through the Eucharist.
Finally, our interior transformation cannot remain isolated. Although intimately personal, God’s presence within us is not private. Like the Eucharist itself, it has external, universal, and even cosmic consequences. Like the life-giving water that flows from the temple in today’s first reading, God’s presence in us is intended to transform the world, feed the world, and heal the world. Today, may we acknowledge this presence, foster this presence, and offer this presence, allowing God to make this house into a home.
Ryan J. Mahle