“Zeal for your house will consume me.”  These were the words that the Apostles recalled when Jesus overturned the money tables and drove them all out of the Temple.  Jesus was cleaning up the house!  This “cleaning house” serves two purposes, one) clean up God’s temple, which we now call the Church and two) clean out your own temple, the temple of you.  You see, you cannot have one without the other.

Let’s begin with our own temples.  How can they be cleaned out?  For starters, especially during Lent we are asked to make a good inventory of ourselves.  We are to do so with prayer, almsgiving, and fasting.  By looking deep within we are to acknowledge those areas of weakness in our lives, but I will go even deeper, we are to go into the depths of our soul and look at all the pain, anger, and sadness we may harbor towards ourselves, towards another or some deep rooted vice which we may not even recognize any longer and come face to face with it.

In doing so, in that honesty we can begin to be healed.  Cleaning our house is not easy, sometimes it takes brutal honesty.  We cannot blame our vices, misgivings, issues, on any one, not our spouses, our siblings, our friends, our parents, or someone who may have hurt us deeply.  We have free will and in that free will God allows us to make choices and though someone may have influenced those choices we need to get past them, remember we stand alone before God and answer to Him alone as well.

People will sometimes look to others as the one or ones that have to fix their issues or in the worst case make someone else their messiah, i.e. their husband, their wife, their child, their friend.  Cleaning house says, “No sir, look within, acknowledge your own faults and take responsibility.”  There is no room in the kingdom of God for shirkers, for blame casters, or unforgivers.”  I know there is no such word as “unforgivers,” but you know what I mean.

Lent is the time to clean up one’s house and to do so with humility and trust in the Good Lord.  The other house we have to clean up is this one, our church.  Yes, clean it up!  I don’t mean go and get your brooms and mops, but rather, again that deep reflection in which we ask, “are being compassionate, focusing on relationship, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, being inviting; all of us are responsible for God’s house.  I love what Pope Francis is doing in cleaning up the place.  He has challenged all priests and religious to live a humble life, he has challenged the laity to remember those in need; he has brought great practical application to theology and has shifted our focus back towards relationships, primarily relationship with God!  The Pope is cleaning the house literally and figuratively.  He is asking us to do the same.

There are many ways we can clean the house, first we must have that same zeal that our Lord has for his house.  We have to drive out those things that hold us back, our own comforts, and perceived privileges, lack of charity, our self-righteousness, and most of all any sin that hinders growth to the body.  The people in Jesus’ time became complacent, they allowed for things in the Temple that should never have been allowed, selling and trading of goods, not taking care of the widow, the orphan, or the down trodden, they lost their focus.  Cleaning house means to regain that focus and in doing so things get clearer.

Both, cleaning my house and the church are not easy.  With the Lord’s help, with his manifold grace we can do both.  Starting right here with me, it must start there and hopefully it becomes contagious and continues with all of us.  What do they say, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”  I am sure it wasn’t just about what kind of skin soap you use or what detergent you use, but rather the cleanliness that is deep down within our own temples and what is deep down in the Temple in which we stand right now.  Together then, as this season of Lent continues, pray, “that the zeal for our house consumes us!”  AMEN!  FJ