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Vigils Reading – 3rd Sun Lent
March 3
THE TEMPLE OF GOD,
THIS BODY OF CHRIST
From a commentary by St Augustine1
◊◊◊
God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple all you who believe in Christ
and whose belief makes you love him. Real belief in Christ means love of Christ:
it is not the belief of the demons who believed without loving and therefore
despite their belief said: “What do you want with us, Son of God?” No, let our
belief be full of love for him…so that instead of saying: What do you want with
us, we may rather say: We belong to you, you have redeemed us. All who believe
in this way are like the living stones which go to build God’s temple, and like the
rot-proof timber used in the framework of the ark which the floodwaters could
not submerge. It is in this temple, that is, in ourselves, that prayer is addressed
to God and heard by Him.
But to pray in God’s temple we must pray in the peace of the Church, in
the unity of the body of Christ, which is made up of many believers throughout
the world. When we pray in this temple our prayers are heard, because whoever
prays in the peace of the Church prays in spirit and in truth.
Our Lord’s driving out of the temple people who were seeking their own
ends, who came to the temple to buy and sell, is symbolic. For if that temple was
a symbol it obviously follows that the body of Christ, the true temple of which
the other was an image, has within it some who are buyers and sellers, or in
other words, people who are seeking their own interests and not those of Jesus
Christ.
But the temple was not destroyed by the people who wanted to turn the
house of God into a den of thieves, and neither will those who live evil lives in
the Catholic Church and do all they can to convert God’s house into a robber’s
den succeed in destroying the temple. The time will come when they will be
driven out by a whip made of their own sins.
The temple of God, this body of Christ, this assembly of believers, has but
one voice, and sings the psalms as though it were but one person. If we wish, it
is our voice; if we wish, we may listen to the singer with our ears and ourselves
sing in our hearts. But if we choose not to do so, it will mean that we are like
buyers and sellers, preoccupied with our own interests.
1 Journey with the Fathers – Year B – New City Press – NY – 1994 – pg 14.3