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MARCH 23, 2003- Third Sunday of Lent
† Jesus made a whip out of cords a drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, spilled the coins of the money changers and over turned their tables, and to those who sold doves he said, "Take these out of here, and stop making my fathers house a market place."
John 2: 13-25 SAVING GRACE
A writer remembers his mother and the very brave thing she did for herself and her family - brave by the standards of 50 years ago:
"Mom gave birth to me on a Tuesday and took me to church the following Sunday to begin my journey with Jesus Christ, a journey she'd begun 26 years earlier.
"She was a woman of strong faith, and I never saw Mom's faith more substantially demonstrated on the day she left Dad for good. Convinced their marriage was damaging my little brother and me, she waited one Sunday afternoon until Dad drank himself to sleep in an upstairs bedroom. She removed the screen from the back window, crawled through, and instructed me to pass my brother through to her and then join them in the backyard. With a finger to her lips to remind us to keep silent, she led us up the alley, around the corner, toward the safe haven of her sister's house.
"Turning onto Center Street from Cedar Avenue, Mom said something I would subsequently hear her say hundreds of times: 'Thank you, God.'"
[From "Working Saints: A Thankful Woman " by Philip Barnhart, Prism, September/October 2002.]
CONNECTION: What Jesus does in today's Gospel, what this mother does for her two sons and herself, we must do in our lives: confront in our lives those people and things that diminish us, that disable us, that hurt us, that prevent us from living our lives to the happiest and the fullest. It is not easy, but God offers us the grace to turn over the fears, ambitions, addictions, selfishness, prejudice that distort the meaning of our lives and debase our relationships with God and with one another. We must drive out of our lives the "money changers" who shortchange us on the time and attention we give to family and friends; drive out the useless, the meaningless, and the destructive that desecrate the sacred place within us where God should dwell; drive out whatever makes our lives less than what God created us to be.
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