Thread by @JamesMartinSJ

Gospel: "My house shall be a house of prayer," says Jesus today, quoting Isaiah (Lk 19).

I always think of the Jesuit Community at St. Mary’s Hall at @BostonCollege when I read this passage. On the first floor is a huge iron gate, the old demarcation of the "cloister..."

...the dividing line between the public space and the private Jesuit rooms, which reads: “Domus Mea Domus Orationis.”

I was very impressed when I saw that as a first-year novice in the old New England Province. First, because I had never seen anything remotely like it before...

...and second, because I had no idea what the Latin meant. On my first visit, one old Jesuit priest was giving us novices a tour. He pointed to the sign, thoughtfully translated it for us, and then said, “House of Prayer? Well, at least trying not to be a Den of Thieves!”

In today's reading, we clearly can sense Jesus’s anger. And it’s often used as an excuse or a reason for Christian anger, and an entrée into Jesus’s humanity. Because who doesn’t get angry?...

The temptation of course is to think that any anger is justified, since Jesus was angry.

But in the Gospels, Jesus is angry only on behalf of someone else, when he sees people being mistreated; or something else, in this case the Temple....

His anger here is because people have desecrated something holy, something he loves, by focusing only on money. It disgusts him....

So in my own life I often have to ask, “Why am I angry?” Is it my own wounded pride? Or is that there is something unjust that’s hurting someone else, or some group, that deserves to be treated justly?...

If it’s the latter, then I don’t think it’s so wrong to turn over a few tables now and then, metaphorically at least.