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Glory and praise to you, God our loving Father in heaven! As we celebrate today the feast of the dedication of the "mother and head of all churches of Rome and the world" - the Lateran Basilica - my thoughts returned to Jerusalem where it all started when your Son Jesus Christ cleansed the Temple just before the Passover.
He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the money changers seated there. He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables, and to those who sold doves he said, “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” His disciples recalled the words of Scripture, “Zeal for your house will consume me”.
John 2:14-17
Fill us with your Holy Spirit to be like Jesus, full of zeal for you, O God and for our Mother Church; let us come to the church like Jesus on that day in all humility and simplicity "riding a donkey", with nothing else except the desire to praise and serve you by cleansing and purifying our very selves, putting things in order in the church where at the very core are always the poor and needy with whom Jesus identified himself with.
Like that "whip out of cords" that Jesus used to drive the traders in the temple area, bind us together as one again, ready and willing to suffer and die on the Cross with Christ for the sake of our unity and communion in him, with him and through him.
We pray for more zeal in us as we journey together as a Church in the ongoing "synod on synodality" in preparation for the most unique Synod of Bishops called by Pope Francis beginning this October until 2023; may it be a journey for us all in the spirit of sharing, reflecting, and listening for a "synodal Church of communion, participation and mission". Amen.
