Meditation of His Beatitude Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa: III Sunday Of Lent, B

Below you can find the Meditation of His Beatitude Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, for the third Sunday of Lent, B, Sunday 3 March 2024.

John 2:13-25

Last Sunday, we went up to Mount Tabor, where Jesus revealed His face as the beloved Son (Mark 9:2-10). We saw that the disciples Peter, James, and John were with him, as well as Moses, and Elijah, who appeared before them. Those two prophets who, during their lives, also participated in an epiphany, a transfiguration: they went up a mountain, where God made himself present, but without ever seeing him face to face, but rather only from behind, after the Lord had passed over.

However, on Mount Tabor, God reveals his face, and he does so in Jesus. In His story, and especially in His Passover, God makes himself known.

Today this process of the unveiling of this revelation takes a further step.

We are at the beginning of John's Gospel (John 2:13-25), where we find an episode that the Synoptics put immediately after Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem instead of at the end of their narrative.

The episode is the so-called cleansing of the temple.

Jesus enters the temple and sees everything that revolves around the temple's wealth: people selling the animals needed for the sacrifices, the animals themselves, and the money changers.

And, in the face of this scene, Jesus makes a prophetic gesture: he sends everyone out, spills the money on the ground, overturns the moneychangers' stalls, and forcefully tells them not to make his Father's house a marketplace (Jn. 2:15-16).

To enter into the understanding of this passage, let us start with one word, which is found in verse 15. Here we read that Jesus throws the money on the ground and overturns the stalls.

Jesus overthrows; Reverses; Overturns.

He overturns the money-changers counters, but first of all, he overturns an image of God and a way of believing.

Each Gospel tells of this overturning. The four evangelists place at the beginning of their narration a gesture or a word, which displays it.

In Matthew, it is seen in the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes (Mt 5:1-12).

Blessed are the poor, those who mourn, the meek, those who wait for justice, the persecuted...: the logic of the world is precisely reversed, because God looks at reality from another perspective. Life is not measured by success and possessions but by the benevolence of God the Father, and His great compassion for anyone who awaits His salvation and relies on Him.

Mark places this turnaround in the first words spoken by Jesus (Mark 1:15), where he announces that the Kingdom of God is at hand and the time for repentance has come for all…

This Meditation was originally published on the website of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Please click here to read the full text.