Holy Monday Thoughts

Tradition remembers Monday as the day Jesus cleansed the Temple.  Of course, it was not just any Monday, but the last Monday of His humanly sojourn among us.  Another way of speaking of this Monday is that it is Monday of Holy Week.  Holy Week is the week of the cross and the last week before history was turned upside down by the Resurrection of Jesus.   With so many possibilities to consider in that last week of His life, it is significant that He would make His way to the Temple for this act of judgment and cleansing.   

What He saw that day in the Temple was something He had surely seen on other occasions.  It was likely something He had mulled over in His mind and prayed about in His times with the Father.  This moment of cleansing was one of those "Enough is enough" moments, or more likely, He knew from His praying that the time for such an act was now right.  The cause of the upstir was all the buying and selling which usurped the praying which was supposed to be happening in the Temple.  It was a kind of exploitation which took advantage of people who came to worship God.    

On that Monday merchants were overcharging the poor for sacrificial doves and forcing people who brought a lamb to be sacrificed to buy one sold at an excessive price from a Temple merchant who declared theirs blemished and unfit.  As our churches get bigger and bigger and demand more and more money to feed the institutional beast that lurk in its meetings rooms, it becomes easy to make profit a greater driving force than the soul work entrusted to it.  On this Monday of Holy Week, it is not hard to imagine that Jesus might have a mind to turn some things over in our midst as well.