Father Robert Barron is a popular Catholic author, speaker and theologian. He is also the founder of the global media ministry Word on Fire which reaches millions of people by utilizing the tools of new media to draw people into or back to the Catholic Faith.
This Lent, Fr. Barron has been sending out daily Lent Reflections via email. Here's his reflection from yesterday called "Turning Over Your Tables" (you can read this on his website here):
From very early on, Christian theologians and spiritual writers made a comparison between Jesus' cleansing of the temple in Jerusalem and Jesus' cleansing of our hearts and bodies. St. Paul refers to the body as a "temple of the Holy Spirit." Your self, your body, your whole person is meant to be a temple, a holy place where God dwells and where prayer and union with God is central. It's a beautiful image: rightly ordered, we become temples of the Holy Spirit.
This image leads to an important question: what goes wrong within the temple of our souls? The same thing that went wrong with the Temple in Jerusalem--what's meant to be a house of prayer becomes a den of thieves. All kinds of distractions came into the Temple, money changers and corrupt influences, those who turned people away from worshiping God.
Today, we should ask, what distractions and corruptions have come into the temple of my heart and body?
Lent is a terrific time to allow Jesus Christ to make a whip of cords and come into the temple of our hearts, and, while there, to turn some tables over, to flip things upside down if he has to.
What would Jesus chase out of your heart if he had a chance? If you let him in, with all the wonderful fury displayed in the Gospels, what would he cleanse?
You can sign up to receive Fr. Barron's daily reflections here.
Clayton Imoo is husband to Gail and father to sons Sean Isaiah and Jacob Isaac and daughter Kayla Marie. He has served as the Director of the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministry of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver for the past ten years, helping parishes develop their own youth and young adult ministries. When not doing ministry, Clay enjoys spending time with his family, playing music, playing sports, playing naptime, and writing blogs on topics such as family, faith, and the Vancouver Canucks. Learn more about him at http://www.claytonimoo.com or follow him @claytonimoo
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