Gospel (Jn 2,13-25) - The Passover of the Jews was approaching and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. He found in the temple people selling oxen, sheep and doves and, sitting there, the money changers. Then he made a whip of cords and drove everyone out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; he threw the money changers' money to the ground and overturned their benches, and to the dove sellers he said: "Take these things away from here and do not make my Father's house a market!". His disciples remembered that it is written: "Zeal for your house will devour me." Then the Jews spoke up and said to him: "What sign do you show us to do these things?". Jesus answered them: "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it again." The Jews then said to him, "This temple took forty-six years to build, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he spoke of the temple of his body. When he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word spoken by Jesus. While he was in Jerusalem for the Passover, during the feast, many, seeing the signs that he performed, believed in his name. But he, Jesus, did not trust them, because he knew everyone and did not need anyone to give testimony about man. In fact, he knew what is in man.

The commentary on the Gospel by Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia

“The Passover of the Jews was approaching and Jesus went up to Jerusalem”. The Gospel passage we listened to begins with these words as if to remind us that Easter is approaching for us too. Three weeks have passed since we were called to set out. And we cannot help but ask ourselves, once again, if we are faithful to the path that has been proposed to us. Yes, dear sisters and brothers, what have we done with the Lenten journey to date? It is also easy for us, as for the disciples of the time, to concentrate more on our concerns than on those of the Gospel, thus slowing down our steps and distancing ourselves from the thoughts of the Lord. In fact, whenever our self prevails, whenever we listen first of all to our own reasons, we distance ourselves from the Lord and from his brothers. But the Lord speaks to us again. In fact, when we gather to listen to the Word of God together we are immersed once again in the itinerary that the Word of God traces for us. We are not a people who walk without words and without a destination to reach. If anything we must continue to ask ourselves whether the light of this Word is before our eyes. Fidelity to the Lord means remembering his Word every day. And the Lord does not let us lack the light that illuminates our steps.
Reading the passage from Exodus reminds us of the "ten words" given by God to Moses on Sinai. They were the first that the Israelites heard. And perhaps for us they were also the first ones we listened to since our childhood. However, if you look at them carefully, the Ten Commandments are not simply a series of high and universal moral norms. They are much more: in them the fundamental content from which all the law and the prophets derive is expressed, that is, love for the Lord and love for others. The two tables, closely linked to each other, express nothing other than this double love that must preside over the itinerary of believers. Through them we are guided towards the goal. All of us, however, know how easy it is to get distracted from love and no longer have the goal before our eyes, becoming prey to that master who continues to undermine our lives. The apostle Peter in his first letter reminds Christians to be sober and to keep watch - and the Lenten season is precisely this! – because “your enemy, the devil, goes around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Stand firm in the faith” (1Pt 5, 8).
Today's evangelical page which presents us with the scene of the expulsion of the sellers from the temple appears as a manifestation of jealousy on the part of Jesus, as the prophet says: "The zeal of your house devours me" to the point of jealousy. Jesus, as soon as he saw the temple invaded by vendors, made a cord and began to lash them and overturn their stalls. He is a particularly tough and resolute Jesus; he cannot tolerate the Father's house being polluted, even if it involves small and, in a certain way, indispensable businesses. Jesus knows well that in a temple where these small businesses are welcomed, even the life of a man can be sold and bought for just thirty denarii. But what is the market that scandalizes Jesus? What is the buying and selling that Jesus cannot bear? Without a doubt, the letter of this evangelical page questions our way of managing places of worship and what is attached to them: that is, whether they are truly places for prayer and meeting with God or not rather sloppy places full of confusion. Likewise, he asks those with pastoral responsibilities to pay great attention to themselves and their communities so that they are not training grounds for their own egocentrism and self-interest or for anything else that does not concern "zeal for the house of the Lord".
But there is another market on which it is important to pay our attention: it is the one that takes place inside hearts. And it is a market that scandalizes the Lord Jesus even more because the heart is the true temple that God wants to inhabit. This market concerns the way of conceiving and leading life. How many times is life reduced to a long and stingy purchase and sale, without the gratuitousness of love anymore! How many times must we observe, starting from ourselves, the rarefied nature of gratuitousness, generosity, benevolence, mercy, forgiveness and grace! The iron law of personal, or group, or national interest seems to inexorably govern the lives of men. All of us, more or less, are busy hustling for ourselves and for our gain; and we do not care if the poisonous herbs of arrogance, insatiability and voracity grow from this practice. What matters and what is worth is one's personal gain; at any price.
Jesus enters our lives once again, as he entered the temple, and overturns this primacy, upsets the ruins of our petty interests and reaffirms the absolute primacy of God. It is the zeal that Jesus has for each of us, for our heart, for our life so that it opens to welcome God. For this reason every Sunday the Gospel becomes like the whip that Jesus uses to change the heart and life. Indeed, every time that little book is opened it drives away attachment to oneself from the hearts of those who listen to it and overturns the tenacity in pursuing one's business in any way. The Gospel is the "double-edged sword", of which the apostle Paul speaks, which penetrates to the very marrow to separate us from evil. Unfortunately, it often happens that we side with those "Jews" who, upon seeing a "layman", such as Jesus, in the sacred territory of the temple, are scandalized and ask for a reason for such abrupt and "irreverent" intervention. “What sign do you show us to do these things?” they ask Jesus. It is the deaf opposition that we still have when faced with the intrusiveness of the Gospel in our lives. Evil and sin, pride and selfishness, seek all ways to hinder the intrusiveness of love into the life of the world. Yet it is precisely in welcoming the love of the Lord that we find salvation. It is more necessary than ever to let ourselves be lashed by the Gospel to be freed from the law of the market, and thus enter the temple of love which is Jesus himself.