3rd Sunday of Lent

Everything we do in life has to do with the pursuit of satisfaction, spiritual contentment, and fulfillment. We strive for new experiences, relationships, accomplishments, and adventures because we have an innate drive for meaning, happiness, and purpose. This is a wonderful aspect of our nature because it is how God made us.

God created human beings to experience true and lasting fulfillment in a deep and personal relationship with Him. That's why the first three Commandments focus on our relationship with God, which is the most essential reality of our lives. But our fallen human nature seeks fulfillment in other places: career success, money, physical pleasure, power, popularity, et cetera.

But that is wrong.

Those things may be acceptable in themselves and have their place in the human story. However, they cannot replace the fulfillment of a close relationship with God. God alone can satisfy our deepest yearning. That is why Jesus gets so upset in today's Gospel.

The Temple was where people could pray, encounter God, and develop friendships with Him. But the merchants and money changers had made it into a marketplace for buying and selling things. The place that should have helped people find God instead became an obstacle to that goal.

Jesus fervently wants us to find God because He wants us to find true fulfillment. He wants our friendship because we can only find fulfillment and satisfaction when seeking communion with God.

Our responsibility in building this friendship consists of two parts: First, we seek to know and love Christ through prayer. Second, we strive to follow Christ by fulfilling God's will for our lives.

This phrase — "God's will" — is easily and often misunderstood or even abused as an excuse to justify questionable personal agendas, whether violent, political, or self-serving.

But there are safeguards against this kind of error. As Christians, we go to Christ's example and teaching and the instruction of the Old Testament, as we heard in our first reading from Exodus when the Commandments were given to the people. These let us know God's will quickly and clearly most of the time.

Jesus wants us to avoid anger, arrogance, judgementalism, gossip, lust, greed, laziness, and dishonesty. These sins damage our friendship with Him and cause serious harm to those around us.

Jesus also wants us to develop our God-given talents and opportunities and use them to build society. Recall His words, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

That's God's will for us, and, again, most of the time, it's perfectly clear if we simply think about it.

However, for those other times when we are doubtful, we need more assistance, which God gave us in His Church. He has promised to instruct us through the teachings of the Church, which sheds the light of Christ's truth on challenging social, personal, and spiritual issues as it has done faithfully for the last 2,000 years. To know, love, and follow Christ also involves knowing, loving, and following Christ's Church.

Jesus wants the Temple of our hearts filled with his friendship, not false idols and empty promises. May we allow Him to cleanse from our hearts, minds, and lives whatever He wants to so that that friendship with Him may thrive.