“HOLY IS THE TEMPLE OF GOD, AND THIS TEMPLE IS YOU" (1 Cor 3:17)
Dear friends of Gethsemane, may the Lord grant you his peace!
In this month of July, dedicated in particular to the Precious Blood of our Lord, we never tire of inviting you to pray for peace! Let us join our prayer to that of the only-begotten Son, the Lord of the universe who can do everything.
We meditate on the Gospel passage in which Jesus goes up to the Temple and makes that energetic gesture of driving out the money changers and merchants, quotes the prophets and says: "It is written: 'My house will be called a house of prayer!' (Is 56,7; Jer 7,11). But you have made it a den of thieves!" (Mt 21:13). The Jews will be annoyed by this gesture to ask him: "What sign do you show us to do these things?" (Jn 2:18). Let us all remember his answer: "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up" (Jn 2:19). He will be mocked sarcastically by his interlocutors, but not by the Evangelist John who specifies: "But he spoke of the temple of his body" (Jn 2:21).
Very important this clarification: "his body". John doesn´t speak here only about the descent from the Cross (destroyed temple) or the discovery of the empty tomb, deprived of the body of Jesus, because He was risen! (Jn 19:38; 20:12). The word always has deep meanings, more than we can imagine: "his body" does not represent only the physicality of God made human but rather the mystery of Incarnation and Redemption of our humanity. He has "inhabited" our humanity and knows it all, in its weaknesses, in its needs, in its limits, and has redeemed it with his Blood. Here is what he did: with his prayer and his sacrifice he made his house a Temple 'capable' of prayer, the living dwelling place of the living God.
Here in the garden of Gethsemane he shows us the extent to which he entered into the darkness of anguish and death to seek the ancient lost Adam, here he found us and meets us! It is in this profound sense of nuptiality and communion that we can understand his desire for each of us, his "Body". Yes, we are his Temple, his Body, living members of his Body, in which he identifies himself, this will be clear with the testimony of Saint Paul who, as an avid persecutor of the early Christians, will hear him say: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" (Acts 9:4). We are part of Him.
Even today the Lord tells us: "I desire that you may be my house of prayer", he says to us personally, to his Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, to every human being. Let us commit ourselves to becoming his home, his holy abode, worthy of this God who has loved us and loves us infinitely! Let us purify ourselves from all guilt, pray, intercede and repair for humanity increasingly scarred by the evil one who, deceiver from the beginning suggests us things contrary to the will of God and his plan of love or proposes us mean things, limiting the centrality of God who loved man so much, so much so as to give his only begotten Son for our eternal salvation.
May Mary Most Holy intercede for us so that the Lamb sacrificed, Shepherd of souls, looking at humanity in need, may still cry out to the stormy 'sea' "Shut up!" (Mk 4:39). May this trust in Him give us true Peace, the one He has given us at the price of His Most Precious Blood.
