Today when Jesus enters the temple, he encounters the marketplace for selling authorized animals for thanksgiving and penance sacrifices. The marketplace was located just inside the main entrance. Within the business mindset that had invaded their worship style, it was seen as a convenient place for folks looking to buy certified sacrificial animals for their thanksgiving and penance. It was a rapid, efficient economic system. For over fifty years, hundreds and hundreds of worshippers, priests, and temple officials passed through the same entrance way to go about their business of prayer, thanksgiving, and penance.
Jesus enters the temple as the returning Glory of God. Looking for faith and prayer, he finds that their worship had been reduced to an external economic exchange. Faith had been turned into a business that oppressed the common folks making it difficult or impossible to complete their yearly obligations of prayer in the temple and where the temple officials, sellers, and businesspeople made out very well.
Jesus does not hesitate to put an end to this system of worship as an oppressive, economic exchange. This is one of the few moments in the Gospel where we see Jesus as angry and forceful. He speaks out clearly to denounce that system and acts accordingly by throwing out all the businesspeople.
Two quick observations:
1-Thanksgiving, penance, and prayer are meant to be deep, internal, personal attitudes. Mere external gestures or prayers that are purchased have no meaning nor significance before God.
2-A deep faith spurs us to action, urges us to live our faith. We are called to do something to change the society that we live in when we see or experience injustice. Many times, we are like the hundreds of worshippers who walks through that entranceway and even participated in the system without doing anything. Look at how Jesus immediately responded to the situation. No hesitation.
My house shall be a house of prayer,
but you have made it a den of thieves
Image: https://medium.com/@daltonking/holy-week-monday-c82c93265726