The Lord be with you, a reading from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke. Jesus entered the temple area and proceeded to drive out those who are selling things, saying to them,
It is written, my house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves." And every day he was teaching in the temple area, the chief priests, the scribes and the leaders of the people, meanwhile, were seeking to put him to death, but they couldn't find a way to accomplish their purpose because all the crowd was hanging on his words.
the gospel of the Lord. We've been preparing with Jesus, ascending to Jerusalem for his entering the holy city. We would have anticipated as we get close to marking the solemnity of Christ the King that he would come triumphant. But as we saw yesterday, as soon as he got a glimpse of the temple area, he whapped
And today, as soon as he enters the temple area, rather than rejoice and praise, he cleanses it. He wept yesterday because Jerusalem didn't recognize the time of its visitation, that he was coming, not just for a visit, but coming to stay, coming to help, coming to convert, coming to save, but they didn't want it. And then he comes to the house in which his father's supposed to be worshipped.
But it had changed to a large degree why most of the people were there. Instead of a house of prayer, instead of a house of praise, instead of a house of thanksgiving and petition to the Lord, it had become, as Jesus said, a den of thieves. This was true in two ways. The first is when people would go up for the main feasts, they would have to sacrifice an animal depending upon their capacity.
But the animals had to be inspected. And as a result, they generally wouldn't walk with the animals along their pilgrimage because there could be injuries that would take place. And so they would most buy animals in the temple precincts. And because it was a seller's market, the sellers could dramatically overcharge people.
If you were wealthy, it didn't make that much of a difference. But if you were poor, that could be consuming most of what you had saved over the course of the year. And Jesus was outraged that his father's house would become a place of that greed. The second instance of that greed was that every time you would go up, you'd have to pay a temple tax. Temple tax itself was a half of a temple shackle, not all that much. But you had to pay in
a temple shackle, not an ordinary shackle. And so the money-changers were able to charge exorbitant money-changing fees. Again, didn't bother those who were wealthy all that much, but it could cripple those who were poor. And so Jesus wanted that type of avarice eliminated from God's house. So he drove them away.
But the biggest sort of issue that was going on that Jesus wanted to fix was this whole sense that no matter what people had done, as long as they sacrificed the right animal to God, everything would be fine. And Jesus had come to teach that it's mercy he wants. It's divine love he wants, not animal sacrifice. And so he was coming to revolutionize the whole way that God himself would be worshiped.
He was doing it in the temple area because he himself was going to become the new temple in St. John's version of the cleansing of the temple. Those who are outraged at what Jesus was doing asked him, what authority do you have to be doing this? He said, destroy this temple in three days, it will be rebuilt. And St. John told us he was talking about the temple of his body. The temple is the place in which man comes to meet God.
and Jesus in his humanity would be the place that all of us would now come to meet God. But that is at the end of the story. As St. Paul tells us, he desires us to be incorporated into him who was that true temple, which is why St. Paul will say, do you not know that you, you are God's temple and that his spirit dwells within you, then he challenges us, therefore glorify God in your body.
were called to be incorporated into this new place of worship greater than the temple of Jerusalem. We're supposed to be the place where God comes to dwell, just like our lady, to meet God not just by making a pilgrimage across the planet, but to meet God first here and then to recognize He comes to dwell within here. That's the reality of our faith and it is mind-blowing.
But in order for that to happen as Jesus wants, we've got to be as committed as He is to clean out the temple area so that there's no greed within where there should be a house of community with God, a house of prayer, so that there's no lust within, so that there's no envy within, so that there's no toxic anger within, so that there's no sloth within, so that there's no pride within,
The Lord wants regularly to cleanse us. He wants to start every mass by doing so. He's created a sacrament so that we can go voluntarily in order to be cleansed so that we can truly be that temple we're created to be. But he wants us to will it with him. What happens in a temple? What happens in a house of prayer? It's a place where the Word of God is supposed to be resident.
But at the same time, it's a place where that word is supposed to become the very structure, the very fiber of who we are. That's why today's first reading is so powerful. When God says to Saint John, go take the scroll that lies open in the hand of an angel who's standing on the sea and on the land, take and swallow it.
This again is a fulfillment of the prophet Ezekiel when the prophet was meant to eat the scroll so that he would ingest the holy words of God written on both sides of the scroll because God had so much to say that he was trying to squeeze it all in and that that word of God would literally take on the prophet's flesh and blood.
so that the prophet would be able then to preach it, not just as an echo of external words, but to preach it with his own humanity. That's what we're seeing here. Take and swallow it. And God says to Saint John, it will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it will taste as sweet as honey. When we really appreciate what God is giving us, there's a sweetness to it.
a sweetness that we talk about in the response world song. How sweet to my taste is your promise. In the way of your decrees I rejoice as much as in all riches. Your decrees are my delight. Think about chocolate mousse. Your decrees are my delight. They're my counselors. The law of your mouth is to me more precious than thousands of gold and silver pieces. Can we pray that?
One sentence of God's word versus thousands of gold and silver pieces, what would we choose? Would we choose the word of God? Do we recognize it's that precious, that sweet? It's going to be sweet when we appreciate it. But then God likewise tells us it's going to turn our stomach sour, at least for a time. Why? Because it's going to be asking us to change. It's going to be requiring a conversion.
And for most of us, that ain't sweet, because we're too attached. But it's good for us. And it's like when we eat something a little sour, when we know it's good for us. I was having a birthday dinner with a beloved niece recently, whom you might know. And she was trying to school her uncle, her favorite uncle I might add, on the difference between regular bread
and sourdough bread. And how much better for you is sourdough bread. I've always hated sourdough bread. But nevertheless, I was listening because despite its sour taste, it apparently is much better for you. So much more with the word of God.
Today, the church celebrates the feast of someone who enflushes these lessons. Somebody who became a true temple of God, a real house of prayer. Somebody was cleansed of sin from the inside, and someone whose whole life was a living in inflesement of God's holy word. Since Cecilia was born to a noble family in Rome, she was wealthy. Her dad wanted to arrange a perfect marriage for her to a Roman patrician
pagan noble. His name was Valyrian. She prayed to try to get out of it. It was unsuccessful. But after they were contractually wed and Valyrian was anticipating to consummate the new marriage, Cecilia said, Valyrian, I am protected by an angel. If you try to harm me in the least way, he's going to make his presence known to you in a way that you'll never forget.
But if you promise to sustain me in this promise I have made to the Lord, you will see him." And so he called her bluff. He loved her. He called her bluff. And he said, well, when will I see him if I protect it? She says, walk with me. We'll go down the Appian way. If you're baptized there, then you will see him. And so he walked with her. He was baptized.
And then he saw her protective angel. It was an extraordinary instance of his own conversion. He then went to his brother to Berteus and told him that he had seen his younger brother trusted his older brother. And they now wanted to live the Christian faith. It was a time of martyrdom under Diocletian. Lots of Christians were being slaughtered. And lots of their bodies were just being left out for the vultures.
and the other animals. So at huge risk, just like Tobit in the Old Testament, they went out to round up the Christian bodies and bury them. That outed them as Christians. And so they were tried and they were convicted and they were about to be tortured and murdered themselves. The guard who was watching, their faith under all of this duress, his name was
Maximus, Maximus converted with them as they were prepared to die, and all three of them were slain. Cecilia, noble daughter, father well connected as a pagan throughout Rome, she then risked her life to go bear her husband, her brother-in-law, and his Roman soldier. And she likewise was out as a Christian, given a chance to save her life by doing the simple thing Christians needed to.
All you needed to do to save your life was take a pinch of incense, put it on some charcoal in front of a marble statue of a pagan god, and that would be considered an act of apostasy, an act of belief in the pagan gods, and you would survive. That's all you had to do, one tiny little pinch. Of course, she refused because that would be idolatry. And so she was sentenced first to be suffocated to death. It didn't work.
And so they tried to chop off her head. That didn't work. There was a gas in her neck, but they just couldn't get all the way through. And so it took three days for her to die from that wound. They buried her in the catacombs that would later be called St. Callistus. And that's where her body lay for 600 years. Eventually,
when they were building a church over her family's home across the Tiber, the Tricevary region of Rome. They wanted to translate her body, and they opened up her tomb, and they recognized she was in corrupt. They saw her laying there. They saw the gas in her neck, and they were all amazed. The Pope at the time, they swore that they
It had an image of that, and then they buried her in that house. In 1599, they opened up her tomb again and saw her exactly as she was found 600 years prior, 1200 years after her death. And they got the great Carla Moderno. He was the guy who did the facade of St. Peter's, and he was great sculptor. To sculpt what she looked like then.
And what he did, he not only showed her lying, showed her dash. He showed exactly how her fingers were. Like this, three in one. That even in her death, she wasn't a sense proclaiming her trust in our Trium God. Three persons, one God. She recognized that she was a temple of God's presence. She was trying to live by what that Lord had revealed.
and that even in her martyrdom, she remained very much a house of prayer as she herself became the sacrifice, united to Jesus' sacrifice for the salvation of the world. Today, as we come here to celebrate Mass and her feast day, the Lord wants to cleanse us so that we can truly be His holy dwelling place. The Lord wants us to consume the Word of God that He has given us.
sweet to our taste, malefluice, honey-like, but calling us to conversion, calling us to a new life. And then as we prepare for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, he wants us to become with him like Cecilia, that sacrifice. Through our intercession, let's ask that great praise be Jesus Christ.
