This is a sermon EVERY PERSON should Listen to:
http://files.audiosancto.org/20140810-Responding-to-Grace-Dispelling-the-Fallacy-of-False-Cause.mp3Click Here for Must-Here Sermon on Responding to God's Grace
_-_Christ_Cleansing_the_Temple_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg) |
| Christ Cleansing the Temple, Bernardino Mei, circa 1655 |
This wonderful depiction by Bernardino Mei (an Sienese / Italian painter from circa 1655) depicts our Lord cleaning the temple. The forefront shows an older person justifying herself for selling the doves, which were needed for the poor or at even average person to make an offering at the temple. But this person was she not doing this for the convenience of travelers from out of town who did not carry with them animals for an offering. But our Lord saw through this, that the convenience was a worldly excuse, and not for the sake of true devotion to God, for our Lord was also pointing to the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, and the 'temple' to be created, in place of the Jerusalem Temple, in every man who receives the supernatural grace of the Sacraments via his (Jesus's) own Passion, Death and Resurrection in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Altar. As Jesus cleanses the temple, he quotes Jeremiah the prophet, "Behold you put your trust in lying words, which shall not profit you: to steal, to murder, to commit adultery, to swear falsely, to offer to Baalim, and to go after strange gods whom you know not. And you have come, and stood before me in this house, in which my name is called upon, and have said: you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear false, burn incenses to Baal, and.and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My Name, and say, 'We are delivered, because we have done all these abominations."
Our Lord wasn't saying that God's people were simply doing business where they shouldn't have, but that they were tremendous hypocrites for presuming upon God's grace and mercy, that, like the Pharisee in the parable of the Pharisee and the sinner, they believed that by simply keeping the temple rituals, they would be delivered from their enemies, even though they were unfaithful, and not truly repentant. They were doing what they were supposed to do in the formal sense of worship while their hearts were far from Him.
I kind of think that the smaller 'vice' or newer vice, is represented by the small child who has true remorse on his face, and clings to the mantle of our Lord in desperation. This, I think, is meant to represent the truly contrite.
