I realize I tend to identify with the “good guys” in the gospels. So I never thought of myself as being like the money changers in the temple. That is until I read Richard Rohr’s daily meditation for May 17, 2020
In the second chapter of the Gospel of John, there is a verse that the disciples attribute to Jesus as he drives out money lenders and sellers of sheep and cattle from the temple in Jerusalem: “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” [John 2:16].
The thought that most hit me was “our common home is also God’s own house, permeated by the Spirit of God from the dawn of creation, where the Son of God pitched his tent in the supreme event of the incarnation.“
My Father’s House
On the eve of what Pope Francis calls Laudato Si Week marking the 5th Anniversary of his landmark (pun intended) encyclical on the environment Laudoto SI’, he wrote four statements that stopped me in my tracks and made me think more deeply.
- Today, we could, and probably we should, understand this house as our common planetary home. It is this common home which is being despoiled and desecrated today. Significantly, our common home is also God’s own house, permeated by the Spirit of God from the dawn of creation, where the Son of God pitched his tent in the supreme event of the incarnation. It is in this common home that God co-dwells with humanity and of which we have been entrusted with stewardship, as we read in the book of Genesis [2:15].
- The contemporary ecological crisis, in fact, lays bare precisely our incapacity to perceive the physical world as impregnated with divine presence. We have swapped the lofty vision of the physical world as God’s own abode, sanctified by the incarnation of the Son of God, with the one-dimensional mechanistic outlook of modernity.
- Accordingly, the physical world gets reduced to a mere storehouse of resources for human consumption, just real estate for market speculation. . . . Through pollution of the planet’s land, air, and waters, we have degraded our common home that is also God’s own home. We have turned this sacred abode into a marketplace.
- In a situation of planetary emergency like the collapse of our planetary abode, we need to be aflame once again with the zeal for our common home.
Pope Francis writes… “I do not want to write this encyclical without turning to that attractive and compelling figure, whose name I took as my guide and inspiration when I was elected Bishop of Rome. I believe that Saint Francis is the example par excellence of care for the vulnerable and of an integral ecology lived out joyfully and authentically.
I don’t think I ever wlll read the story A”My Father’s House” in John’s Gospel solely from that vantage of the “good guys”again.
About “My Father’s House”…
- Is my concept of “my father’s house” too small?
- Do I need to enlarge how I think of “my father’s house”?
- And then the “Vincentian Question” What must be done ?
I would go so far as to say the Universe is my Father’s house. But, the human mind can’t begin to comprehend that, so we must, like Francis (Saint & Pope) begin with our earthly home as the house that we must care for. And, that also means care for our immediate environs (home, street, city, state, country…)
We are in this house together. If it is to survive, we must recognize that (apologies to St. Paul for paraphrasing here): “I live no longer, but Christ lives through me”. And that means that I understand that what I do affects all. I saw a quote yesterday that it seems applies quite well to our current situation:
“You ought to think this way: ‘Very well, by God’s decree the enemy has sent us poison and deadly garbage. Therefore, I will ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I will fumigate, help purify the air, give out medicine, and take it yourself. I will avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perhaps infect and transmit it to others, and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others.'” (Martin Luther on how a Christians should act during a deadly epidemic.)
And that is the beginning of answering the Vincentian Question.
Beth, Thank you very much for giving us this to think about on our Emmaus walk.
That one little phrase, “My Father’s House”, has a brand new meaning for me, having read your thoughts.
For those not aware of it… Earth Beat is providing some further food for thought for this fifth anniversary of Laudato SI.”Vatican office invites church on journey to ‘total sustainability’ in next decade”
https://www.ncronline.org/earthbeat
“… Solomon,” says St. Stephen in Acts 7, 47, “built a house for him. Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands.” The deacon went on to quote Is 66, 1-2.
And José Antonio Pagola suggests that when we take God more as Power than as Love), we end up distrusting him and cautious. Our religion, then, becomes more a religion of selfish interests and fears that is closer to magic than to Christian faith (https://www.edmundorice.net/en/the-intimacy-of-god-by-jose-antonio-pagola/).
I dare add that when we associate God more with power and its trappings (magnificent houses and buildings, with the palazzo apostolico—see SV.EN VIII:49 https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1033&context=vincentian_ebooks ) than with love (whose preferential option is for the children who are left behind most, living in Casa Santa Marta, in simple houses, if they are not homeless, and getting by with few and simple things), we, then, become possessive to the point of becoming greedy and exploitive of others and of “our planetary common home.” We become like the idols we make for ourselves (Ps 115, 8).
I was struck this morning by another comment from Richard Rohr… “Loving God by Loving the World”