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When I was a boy, and
growing up in Logansport, one of the most regular Spring
rituals at the Haines Household, was our annual Spring
cleaning, It was as much a regular part of our Spring
routine as was the Stations of the Cross every Friday night
during Lent, or Mass on Holy Thursday evening, or praying
for three hours on Good Friday afternoon. One weekend,
every Spring, usually in March, my Mom cleaned everything,
our whole house, from top to bottom. And when we got older,
she made my brothers and I help her out. This was a two-day
event! The walls were all wiped down. The baseboards were
meticulously washed. The furniture was all moved. The
carpets were cleaned. The wood paneling was polished.
Every window was cleaned with that blue stuff, inside and
out. In fact, if it was warm enough, all the windows and
doors would be open, to let in the new, fresh air. Now,
when you’re a kid, these were the two worst days of the
whole year. Who wants to spend their whole weekend
cleaning? Don’t moms realize that they are just going to
get dirty again? Especially, this is true with all boys.
Didn’t my Mom realize this? You can tell that she’s not
here this weekend, can’t you? Still, every March, it was
time for Spring Cleaning. For the longest time, I used to
think that my Mom single-handedly kept Johnson and Johnson
in business.
Back in Jesus’ day,
they didn’t have Pledge or Windex, but today we hear about Jesus
doing some Spring Cleaning of His own. Jesus goes to the Temple
on His final trip to Jerusalem, and He gets very upset about
what is going on in His Father’s house. The Temple had become
like the Mall of America. People were selling things. There
were money-changers all over. You could buy many different
things. And seeing this, elicits in Jesus the most emotional,
the most angry, the violent response of His entire life and
ministry. This is isn’t the nice, peaceful, Kumbaya
Jesus that we usually see in the Gospels. Today Jesus is mad.
He’s turning over tables. And He’s spilling money and goods all
over the place. And He’s kicking people out of the Temple, like
it was His own house, which it was, by the way. And He’s losing
a lot of friends, by telling them the truth.
Scripture scholars
tell us that the cleansing of the Temple had to happen. It’s
part of Jesus getting Himself, His Apostles, all of His
followers, and ultimately even all of Jerusalem ready for what’s
about to happen there between that first Palm Sunday and Easter
morning. The Temple had been perverted. It was supposed to be
a place of prayer, and sacrifice, and worship of God. The
Jewish people had allowed the world to creep into the Temple,
into religion and into the divine. Jesus sees all of this as a
distraction, and this one particular spring, Jesus takes on the
job of cleaning up the Temple.
Today, this Lent,
Jesus takes on the challenge of cleaning up His Church, the new
Temple. Only now, He’s not driving out money-changers and
putting out animals. Instead, today Jesus is concerned about
His Church, built of living stones. He trying to clean us up.
You know, we too can be so distracted by everything that’s going
on, many times, even really good things going on. Lent is a
time for us to get rid of our distractions. We need to clean up
our messes. We need to throw up the windows and doors of our
souls to let in the fresh Spirit of God. We need to turn back
to God and get reconciled with Him and with one another. Lent
is our spring cleaning for our souls. What are you doing this
Lent? How are you doing at doing it? And with Easter now less
than a month away, what are you doing to get ready? This is our
time. We’ve got a lot of work to do. Isn’t it time that we
expelled our distractions and concentrated on lives of
holiness? May we persevere in all of our efforts this Lent!
God bless us on this Sunday,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…AMEN !!!
St. Maria Goretti…Pray for us
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