Is our church still the same now as it was before? Over the past months, years to be a little exact, our once happy and close-tied community has seen many families and members cut ties with the parish, and a few long-time faithful members called home to our Savior. One look at our attendance statistics and you will see the difference. But that’s not at all bad, some would think. But it gets us to thinking about who will be the souls that would take the place of those who have gone to other parishes or gone to heaven. That got us to thinking on how are we going to make our brothers and sisters come back to our parish, to where we were once. That gets us to think about cleansing, be it as an organized church effort or a personal opportunity placed in our path. We’re seeing those opportunities before us right now. Chapels no longer being given masses due to unpaid monthly dues. Parochial Vicars come and go in a very short span of time. Complaints to the diocese left hanging. These among others. The only question is how we will respond to these opportunities. And that’s where the lessons from Jesus’ cleansing of the temple come to mind. Don’t bring the world into the church. Let the church be the church. Let Christ and His work be the essence of our teaching and preaching and confessing and evangelizing. The Church does not exist for those who only come to Church, it also exists for those who are yet to come. It welcomes those who are not in the family of God and begin the journey with Christ and never the other way around. All of us need to regularly seek God’s presence, and then take God to others and never send people away from God. Jesus rid the temple of its worldly influences so that it could return to a house of prayer and a place for sacrifice. Jesus may have cleansed the temple more than once during his ministry. None of the accounts say that this only happened once. Parents know that their children will make the same mistake more than once and that they will have to correct them more than once. If that’s obvious in daily life, why can’t that be the case here? How about us, our church? Do we need any more cleansing?
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 14:18:40 +0000
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