The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 83: Jesus and the Temple

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

Given that the Temple was at the heart of Jewish life and worship, Jesus’ relationship with the Temple speaks volumes. Fr. Mike highlights Jesus’ reverence for the Temple and unpacks the remarkable implications of Jesus’ prophecy about the destruction of the Temple. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 583-586. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmidt and you're listening to The Catechism in a Year Podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in Scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our Heavenly Home. this is day 83, we're reading paragraphs 5, 83 to 5, 86. As always, I'm using the ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach,

which you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to download your own Catechism in a year reading plan. Visit ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y. And also, you can click follow or subscribing to our podcast for daily updates and daily notifications. As I said, it's day 83. We're reading paragraphs, 583 to 586. Yesterday, we talked about Jesus and the law. Today, we're talking about Jesus

and the temple. It's only four paragraphs. We recognize that we have to understand the importance of the temple. I remember hearing it described that the temple isn't just a place of worship, although to say just a place of worship is massively an understatement. It would be like the temple is not only St. Peter's Basilica, this heart of, if you wanna have the symbol of the image of where Catholic's worship,

it's also like the White House. In a sense of governance would happen from the temple and like Wall Street, in a sense that a commerce would happen, you regulated in the temple. And that sense of it all being connected so your whole life as a Jewish person would be connected in some way, shape or form to the temple. Of course, the reason being primarily because the temple was the primary place of worship of God. In fact, it was the only place you could offer up sacrifice

to God in Jewish life. You could pray anywhere, you could read scripture, you could study scripture, you could pray in the synagogue, which is incredible, but it was the temple. That was where the priests were. And as such, that's where the sacrifices were. And as such, that is where worship was. And so Jesus comes along, and he makes some comparisons between himself and the temple.

Saying, ultimately, that just like yesterday when it comes to the law, he's the fulfillment of the law. He also is the fulfillment of the temple that in himself, the temple of his body, which would be struck down, and he will be raised up again in three days. But also the temple of memory is the not only the place of God's presence, but the temple is also the place of worship. And that is absolutely critical for us to understand. As we read this section about Jesus and the temple, so to open our hearts and our minds,

we just pray to our Father in heaven. We give you praise, we give you glory, we thank you for this moment. We thank you above all for your Son Jesus. And thank you for the Holy Spirit that you've poured into our hearts as baptized Christians. We thank you for the gift of worship. We thank you that in your Son you have fulfilled all worship of old and you've placed in our hands, in our lives, the new and eternal covenant, the new and eternal way you want us to worship you, which we see in sign and in shadow now. But ultimately, we will see and to be able to do face to face in your presence for all eternity. Lord God, open our minds and our hearts to understand and love your temple.

Open our minds and our hearts to understand and love how the temple is fulfilled in your Son Jesus Christ. In Jesus' name we pray in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. As I said, it is day 83 reading paragraphs, 583 to 586. Jesus and the temple. Like the prophets before him, Jesus expressed the deepest respect for the temple in Jerusalem. It was in the temple that Joseph and Mary presented him 40 days after his birth.

At the age of 12, he decided to remain in the temple to remind his parents that he must be about his father's business. He went there each year during his hidden life, at least for Passover. His public ministry itself was patterned by his pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the great Jewish feasts. Jesus went up to the temple as the privileged place of encounter with God. For him, the temple was the dwelling of his father, a house of prayer, and he was angered that its outer court had become a place of commerce. He drove merchants out of it because of jealous love for his father, saying,

you shall not make my father's house a house of trade." His disciples remembered that it was written, Zeal for your house will consume me. After his resurrection, his apostles retained their reverence for the temple. On the threshold of his passion, Jesus announced the coming destruction of this splendid building, of which there would not remain one stone upon another. By doing so, he announced a sign of the last days which were to begin with his own Passover. But this prophecy would

be distorted in its telling by false witnesses during his interrogation at the High Priest's house, and would be thrown back at him as an insult when he was nailed to the cross. Far from having been hostile to the temple where he gave the essential part of his teaching, Jesus was willing to pay the temple tax, associating with him, Peter, whom he had just made the foundation of his future church. He even identified himself with the temple, representing himself as God's definitive dwelling place among men. Therefore, his being put to bodily death presage the destruction of the temple, which would

manifest the dawning of a new age in the history of salvation. He said, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. Okay, there we have it. Four relatively short paragraphs here about Jesus and the temple. Paragraph 583 highlights the fact that the temple is critically important in Jesus' life, right? So the very first line, like the prophets before him,

Jesus expressed the deepest respect for the temple in Jerusalem. And that's got to be so clear for us. Remember when we read the prophets through the Bible, roughly a year or two ago, how often the prophets lamented over the destruction of the temple. Remember how often the prophets would point to worship in the temple. This is so critically important.

And so like the prophets before him, Jesus expressed the deepest respect for the temple in Jerusalem. And so critical, 584. Jesus went up to the temple as the privileged place of encounter with God. And it lists a couple things that what was the temple for Jesus? Well, it says here, for Jesus, the temple was the dwelling of his father, a house of prayer, and he was angered that its outer court had become a place of commerce. We all know that. We all know the story of Jesus driving out the money changes in the

temple. Why? Zealot for your house would consume me. Why is that? Well, because he recognized this is the dwelling of his father that the presence of God would abide in the temple. Not only that, not only is the presence of God important here, but it's also the place in which prayer would happen, also the place in which worship would happen. This is so remarkably important. If we think about this in two ways, that I mentioned that the temple was known as the place of worship, it was known as the White House of the people of Israel, right? So a place of governance as well. And Wall Street, a place of commerce, economics. But above all, it was a place where God would abide, and a place where God was worshiped.

This is absolutely critical. That if God were to leave the temple, then the people would cease to exist. Their reason for being would cease to exist. Why? Remember we've talked about this so many days, and these 83 days, why did God do any of this? Why did God make this world in the first place? Why did He make human beings? Why did He reveal Himself at all to us so that we could share in His own divine life?

So we could have relationship with him. And so here's the place of his dwelling. Here's the place of his presence. And here's the place in which when we act, when we worship him in the place of his presence, we're drawn further and further into relationship, a relationship of obedience and a relationship of love, a relationship of trust. And so here is why Jesus is highlighting the reality of the importance of the temple. And more, right?

585 and 586 highlight this, that while Jesus had a deep and profound reverence for the temple, He also announced the coming destruction of this splendid building. And also, He announced a sign of the last days which were to begin with his own Passover, that this temple will be destroyed, not one stone upon another stone. This is remarkable for so many reasons, but here is just one simple reason. I mentioned many times now that the temple was the place of worship, that privileged place of encounter. Now, obviously, God is everywhere. Obviously, we can encounter God anywhere at the same time.

It privileged place of encounter, the privileged place of worship. In fact, the only place to be able to offer sacrifice, as Jesus recounts in Gospel John, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain, right? That was when he was talking to the woman of Samaria. So in Samaria, nor in Jerusalem, right, at the temple, will you worship the Father? That there is a new, an eternal kind of worship that he's going to institute.

What's remarkable is that Jesus' prophecy about the destruction of the temple did come to pass in the 70s, right? The Romans in response to a Jewish rebellion, they encircled the city, they besieged it, they destroyed the temple, they killed every Jew in Jerusalem. Now Christians had escaped because Jesus had prophesied this.

He said, when you see these things happening, run to the hills, get out of the city. What's, I say, remarkable, but don't mean like happy remarkable, but in the midst of this grief, in the midst of this devastation, here is the worship in Jerusalem that is ceased to exist. Remember, we've been talking the last couple days about Jesus fulfills these things. Jesus fulfills the law.

He also fulfills temple, and he fulfills temple worship. Because the night before he died, Jesus gave the new and eternal covenant. The night before he died, Jesus gave us the worship that he desired when he said, take this all of you and eat of it. This is my body. Take this all of you and drink from it.

This is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant. Do this in remembrance of me. Now remarkably, remarkably, Jesus had presaged right, that's the fancy word we heard in paragraph 586. He presaged the fact that all worship, all sacrifice in the temple would cease to exist with the cessation of the temple, but that the worship he asked for in the mass

would go throughout the entire world. You know, there's one last note here. We're going to talk about this when we get to the teaching on the Eucharist in the next section. But this reality that Eucharist means Thanksgiving, you know, in the ancient Jewish temple, there are many reasons for worship. They had a worship, you'd offer sacrifice for repentance, you'd offer sacrifice for salvation, you know, for sacrifice for an offering of gratitude, you know, for, you know, your toda sacrifice,

you'd offer to sacrifice for so many things. In fact, the rabbis at one point, they had said that in the age to come, right, in the age of the Messiah, all sacrifices would cease except for one, and that sacrifice would be the Toda, T-O-D-A-H sacrifice. And that Toda sacrifice would endure for all eternity. Well Toda in Hebrew means sacrifice of thanks, right? Thank offering. Eucharist means thanks or thanksgiving. And so we recognize that those rabbis were prophetic. They announced that,

yes, all sacrifices of the temple would cease except for one, and that is the sacrifice we've been given by Jesus at the last supper, the Eucharist, that sacrifice of thanksgiving, that we offer every single day around the world. And we get to be part of this because Jesus is the fulfillment of the temple. Not only the temple where God's presence would abide, he's also the fulfillment of the sacrifice that would happen in the temple, which is incredible that we've been invited into this. You've been invited into this and so have I.

So we just continue to pray and say, God, help me, help us all to recognize that you're truly present in the Eucharist, that you are the one who abides with us, right? Emanuel, God with us. You have tabernacle among us. You've made your home among us. And right now, even, even now, not only do we have your Holy Spirit, we do have your body and your blood, soul and affinity in every Catholic church. And we offer that sacrifice up at every Catholic mass. So we just give God thanks and praise and I'm so grateful for you. I give God thanks and praise for you and I'm praying for you. Please pray for me on his Father Make it. Can I wait to see you tomorrow?

God bless. you