Distinction between the Sacred and the Secular

03-04-2018Weekly ReflectionFather Barnabas Duniya

The Book of Exodus tells us what sacrifices are acceptable to God coupled with an invitation to purify our religion of cults that have nothing to do with love of God and the neighbors. St. Paul, inhis first letter to the Corinthians, tells us that we must stop reasoning like the ‘Jews’ and the‘Greeks’, rather, we should preach Christ crucified and a stumbling block to unbelievers! The Gospel recounts the story of the purification of the temple, or rather, the replacement of the old temple with the new one. We are the new temple but, like the old, we also often need purificationfrom all that hinders our offering to God’s acceptable sacrifices.

Many cultures make a distinction between the Sacred and the Secular. God Himself sanctioned thatdistinction when He gave the Ten Commandments. Among other things, His name was to be heldHoly. The people who were buying and selling in the temple did not respect the distinction betweenthe Sacred and the Secular. Jesus reminded them by driving them out of the temple with a whip ofcords. That was how much the distinction meant to Jesus (the Liturgy, the Scripture and the Eucharist).

The word of God teaches that the temple of God is not just the physical building, but the individual believer as well. Jesus actually uses the word temple to refer to Himself in today’s Gospel. Jesus isthe original, primordial temple of God. Every baptized person is a temple of God (the Holy Spirit) inso far as we participate in the dignity and status of Jesus as Temple. The Apostle Paul enjoined thebelievers of his time and ours to be alive to theirs and our status as God’s temple (1Cor.3:16). WhenJesus compares the temple of Jerusalem to His Own body, He is revealing the deepest truth aboutHimself-the Incarnation. We can grasp this truth only in the light of the events of the last Passoverand the Eucharist (Jn 2:22).

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