Dear Brothers and Sisters,
On this Third Sunday of Lent the Gospel - in St John’s version - refers to the famous episode of Jesus who drives the animal dealers and the money-changers out of the Temple of Jerusalem (Jn 2:13-25). The event, recorded by all the Evangelists, happened in the Passover Feast and made a deep impression on both the crowd and the disciples. How should we interpret Jesus’ action?  First of all it should be noted that it did not provoke any repression from the keepers of public order because it was seen as a typical prophetic action: indeed, in God’s name prophets often reported abuse and sometimes did so with symbolic gestures.   The expulsion of the dealers from the Temple has also been interpreted in a political and revolutionary sense, placing Jesus on a par with the zealots’ movement. ...In fact it is impossible to interpret Jesus as violent: violence is contrary to the Kingdom of God, it is a tool of the antichrist. Violence is never useful to humanity but dehumanizes it.  Let us listen to the words that Jesus spoke while he was carrying out this action. “Take these things away; you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade”. And the disciples then remembered that in a Psalm is written: “zeal for your house has consumed me” (69[68]:10). This Psalm is a call for help in a situation of extreme danger, because of the hatred of enemies: the plight that Jesus was to live through in his Passion.

In fact the “sign” that Jesus was to give as proof of his authority would be his very death and Resurrection. “Destroy this temple”, he said, “and in three days I will raise it up”. And St John recorded: “he spoke of the temple of his body” (Jn 2:20-21). With the Pasch of Jesus a new form of worship begins, the cult of love, and a new temple which is he himself, the Risen Christ, through whom every believer can worship God “in spirit and truth” (Jn 4:23).

Dear friends, the Holy Spirit began to build this new temple in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Let us pray through his intercession that every Christian may become a living stone of this spiritual building.

_ Dear Brothers and Sisters,

This Sunday marks the second stage of the Season of Advent. This period of the liturgical year brings into the limelight the two figures who played a preeminent role in the preparation for the historic coming of the Lord Jesus: the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist. Today’s text from Mark’s Gospel focuses on the latter. Indeed, it describes the personality and mission of the Precursor of Christ (Mk 1:2-8). Starting with his external appearance, John is presented as a very ascetic figure: he was clothed in camel-skin and his food was locusts and wild honey that he found in the Judaean desert (Mk 1:6).

Jesus himself once compared him to the people “in kings’ houses” who are “clothed in soft raiment” (Mt 11:8). John the Baptist’s style must remind all Christians to opt for a lifestyle of moderation, especially in preparation for the celebration of the Christmas festivity, in which the Lord, as St Paul would say, “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9).

 

With regard to John’s mission, it was an extraordinary appeal to conversion: his baptism “is connected with an ardent call to a new way of thinking and acting, but above all with the proclamation of God’s judgment” (Jesus of Nazareth, I, p. 14; English translation, Doubleday, New York, 2007) and by the imminent appearance of the Messiah, described as “he who is mightier than I”, who “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Mk 1:7, 8).

John’s appeal therefore goes further and deeper than a lifestyle of moderation: it calls for inner conversion, based on the individual’s recognition and confession of his or her sin. While we are preparing for Christmas, it is important that we reenter ourselves and make a sincere examination of our life. Let us permit ourselves to be illuminated by a ray of light that shines from Bethlehem, the light of the One who is “the Mightiest” who made himself lowly, “the Strongest” who made himself weak.

 

All four Evangelists describe John the Baptist’s preaching with reference to a passage from the Prophet Isaiah: “A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God’” (Is 40:3). Mark also inserted a citation from another prophet, Malachi, who said: “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who shall prepare your way” (Mk 1:2; cf. Mal 3:1).

These references to Old Testament Scriptures “envisage a saving intervention of God, who emerges from his hiddenness to judge and to save; it is for this God that the door is to be opened and the way made ready” (Jesus of Nazareth, I, op. cit., p. 15).

 

Let us entrust to Mary, the Virgin of expectation, our journey towards the Lord who comes, as we continue on our Advent itinerary in order to prepare our hearts and our lives for the coming of the Emmanuel, God-with-us.

_ Dear Brothers and Sisters,

This Sunday’s Gospel ends with a particularly severe warning from Jesus, addressed to the chief priests and the elders of the people: “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it” (Mt 21:43). These are words that call to mind the great responsibility of those in every epoch who are called to work in the Lord’s vineyard, especially in roles of authority, and they press for a renewal of full fidelity to Christ.

He is “the very stone which the builders rejected” (cf. Mt 21:42), because they judged him to be hostile to the law and a danger to public order; but he himself, rejected and crucified, is risen, to become the “corner stone” on which the foundations of every human life and of the whole world may rest in total safety.

The truth of this is the subject of the Parable of the Unfaithful Tenants to whom a man entrusted his vineyard so that they might cultivate and harvest the produce. The owner of the vineyard symbolizes God himself, while the vineyard symbolizes his people, as well as the life he gives, so that with his grace and our hard work, we may do good. St Augustine comments: “God does also cultivate us... as a field, that he may make us better” (cf. Sermo 87, 1, 2: PL 38, 531). God has a project for his friends, but unfortunately the human response is often oriented to infidelity which is expressed in rejection. Pride and selfishness prevent us from recognizing and welcoming even God’s most precious gift: his Only-Begotten Son.

When, in fact, “he sent his son to them”, the Evangelist Matthew wrote, “[the tenants] took him and cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him” (Mt 21:37, 39). God puts himself in our hands, agrees to make himself an unfathomable mystery of weakness and manifests his omnipotence in his faithfulness to a plan of love which, in the end, also provides for the proper punishment of the wicked (cf. Mt 21:41).

Firmly anchored in faith to the cornerstone which is Christ, let us abide in him, like the branch that can bear no fruit unless it remains attached to the vine. The Church, the People of the New Covenant, is built only in him, for him and with him. On this the Servant of God Paul VI wrote: “The first benefit which We trust the Church will reap from a deepened self-awareness, is a renewed discovery of its vital bond of union with Christ. This is something which is perfectly well known, but it is supremely important and absolutely essential. It can never be sufficiently understood, meditated upon and preached” (Encyclical Ecclesiam Suam, 6 August 1964: AAS 56 [1964], 622).

Dear friends, the Lord is ever close and active in humanity’s history and accompanies us with the unique presence of his Angels, whom today the Church venerates as “Guardian Angels”, that is, ministers of the divine care for every human being. From the beginning until the hour of death, human life is surrounded by their constant protection. And the Angels encircle the august Queen of Victories, the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Rosary, who, on the first Sunday of October, at this very moment, receives the fervent supplication from the Shrine of Pompeii and from the whole world that evil may be defeated and God’s goodness revealed in its fullness.