The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 83: Jesus and the Temple (2024)

Episode Date: March 23, 2024

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. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. 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.

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Slash support that's ascensionpress.com slash support. That's ascensionpress.com slash support. Thank you and God bless. Hi, my name is father Mike Schmitz 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 583 to 586. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach. 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 subscribe on your podcast app 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 right this this heart of if you want to have like the symbol of the image of where Catholics worship It's also like the White House and sense of governance would happen from the temple and like Wall Street in the sense that Commerce would happen you

Regulated in the temple and this 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 yeah, 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 will be struck down and he'll be raised up again in three days.

But also the temple of memory is not only the place of God's presence, 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 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 forty days after His birth. At the age of twelve, 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 by presenting himself as God's definitive dwelling place among men. Therefore, his being put to bodily death presaged 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. So the very first line, like the prophets before him, Jesus expressed the deepest respect for the Temple in Jerusalem. 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, 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 changers in the temple. Why zeal 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. And 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 That the reason for being would cease to exist Why because remember we've talked about this so many days in these 83 days

That why did God do any of this? Like 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? Well 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, right, 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 of John, "'The hour is coming when neither on this mountain,' right, that was when he's talking to the women of Samaria, so in Samaria, "'nor in Jerusalem,' right, at the temple,

"'will you worship the Father?' And there is a new and 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 I 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 has 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 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, they had many reasons for

worship. They had, you know, worship. You'd offer sacrifice for repentance. You'd offer sacrifice for salvation. You'd offer sacrifice for an offering of gratitude. You'd offer, you know, your Todah 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 Todah, T-O-D-A-H, sacrifice. And that Todah sacrifice would endure for all eternity. Well, Todah in Hebrew means sacrifice of thanks, right? Thank offering. Eucharist means thanks or thanksgiving. And so we recognize that those rabbis were prophetic and they 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 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? Emmanuel God with us you have tabernacled among us You've made your home among us and right now even now, not only do we have your Holy Spirit, we do have your body and your blood, soul and divinity in every Catholic church. And we offer that sacrifice up at every Catholic mass. 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. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.