33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time: Dying to Oneself to be Rebuilt

Since the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, back on June 30th, our Gospel readings, have all been things that happened—things Jesus said and did—as he made his long, slow, southward journey to Jerusalem. It started in Luke chapter 9 until he reached the city in chapter 20. As he drew near enough that he could see the city, Jesus spoke to his beloved, but unfaithful city as though he was speaking to another person,

“If this day you only knew what makes for peace--but now it is hidden from your eyes. For the days are coming upon you when your enemies will raise a palisade against you; they will encircle you and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another within you because you did not recognize the time of your visitation" (19:42-44).

Not long after that, when Jesus was within the Temple grounds, he overheard people expressing their amazement at the majesty, the beauty of Jerusalem’s Temple. They must have been stunned by his words: "All that you see here--the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down." I suspect they might have had a hard time believing what he was saying—the Temple was a symbol of power and God’s abiding presence.

And yet it happened just as Jesus had said it would. In May of the year 70 A.D., the Roman general, Titus, accompanied by a powerful army of more than 60,000 men, seiged the walls of the city, and eventually destroyed everything in sight, even entering the Holy of Holies, setting it afire—calling to mind the words we heard today from the prophet Malachi: “Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven, when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble”.

40 years earlier, when Jesus anticipated this destruction, he was saddened, but I believe he knew it had to be. God wanted to make something new. The destruction had to be in order that God’s presence among His people and His plan of salvation might no longer be narrowly associated with the Temple itself and the sacrifices that took place within, but instead with the one who himself was to be the sacrifice; the one who said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” (Jn 2:19); the one who would be God’s presence among us, Jesus himself. Jerusalem had witnessed so many signs worked by Jesus, yet they did not recognize the time of their visitation.

But even more, God wants to build our hearts into temples, to dwell and be fully alive within us. As St. Paul said, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Cor 3:16). And just as the Temple in Jerusalem was painfully leveled, so must we be—dying to our old ways, to sin—in order to become more truly God’s temple.

In all the ways that fiery destruction and dying to one’s self sounds scary, we’re reminded that it is another life for which we were truly made, and Jesus comes to us to take us there. St. John of the Cross said it this way:

“When His love first comes to us, we perceive it as a fire and that is because his first work is to purify and cleanse the soul of sin, selfishness, fear and anger….its purpose is to make us clear in spirit—clear as pure crystal, so that He may be seen in us.” (Living Flame of Love: Stanza 1).

As God’s true Temple, Jesus is also the Lamb whose Body was and is broken for us and his Blood was and is poured out for us. May this sacrificial gift give us the grace to not be stifled by fear for the ways we need to die unto ourselves. But also, may this Body be the brick and his Blood the mortar that rebuilds us into the temple that God desires to build in us now.