Gospel (Lk 19,45-48) - At that time, Jesus, having entered the temple, began to chase away those who sold, saying to them: «It is written: «My house will be a house of prayer». Instead you have made it a den of thieves." Every day he taught in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes sought to have him killed, and so did the leaders of the people; but they did not know what to do, because all the people were hanging on his lips as they listened to him.

The commentary on the Gospel by Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia

Jesus, having entered the holy city, headed towards the temple. In those walls there was the heart of Jerusalem, the place of God's presence, in which the faith and history of Israel found fulfillment. But then the spirit of the world, with its interests in profit and material wealth, had also invaded that space dedicated to God and prayer. That house had truly been transformed into a market, a receptacle for business and buying and selling. It could be said that the temple had become the emblem of the condition of the world: a place also slave to materialism, to a life understood as a market, as an exchange of goods. For many, even today, what matters in life is buying and selling, purchasing and consuming. And nothing more. The dimension of gratuitousness in life seems to have disappeared, indeed positively banished. The law of the market has become the new religion, with its temples, its rites, its altars on which to sacrifice everything. Jesus, angry at this mean as well as scandalous spectacle, chases away the sellers shouting: "My house will be a house of prayer". The only true relationship, the only one that has full citizenship in life, is free love for God and for brothers which becomes a space for the real presence of God in every city. Space for God must be made in the heart. Jesus chases the sellers out of the temple and also chases away that materialistic spirit present in our hearts. And he announces the Gospel to us again. The evangelist writes that from that moment Jesus remains in the temple and begins to announce the Gospel every day. That place - and we hope it will be the same for our hearts too - once again becomes the sanctuary of mercy and love.