A Homily for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

+ Piety classically relates to participation in civic life. Even within the pagan culture, this always had liturgical aspects to it. It is not possible to be a part of a society without partaking of its rites. But it is by no means relegated to liturgy. Piety, in this ancient sense, includes everything that is expected of an honest citizen. As a Christian virtue piety naturally turned civic life towards the city of God. Whilst in more modern periods “the city of God” has come to be understood to refer entirely to heaven, yet for much of the life of Church it has referred just as much to the church on earth.

Our Lord demonstrates the multiple layers of piety in the Gospel perfectly. He laments the upcoming destruction of the city which has for so long been the centre, the capital of Israel - the city which houses the Temple of sacrifice before the One True God. Whilst that prefiguratory sacrifice would no longer hold validity after His Sacrifice on the Cross, the Temple could not lose its sacrality. Upon arriving in the Temple, moreover, He drives out the merchants and the money changers who are profiteering upon the simplicity of other people. More gravely still they are profiteering over those who are trying to carry out their offering to God as prescribed by the law of Moses.

Whilst the Pharisees are concerning themselves over the zealots and other nationalists who are provoking the Romans towards the destruction of the city, Our Lord’s act indicates the real cause of the upcoming destruction of Jerusalem. Unquestionably the zealots played their part in the provocation, yet it is at the level of grace that the abuse of the simple faithful which aggravates the situation far more grievously. In His piety Our Lord turned not only to the defence of the Temple’s dignity, but also to the defence of justice. Injustice and idolatry had long been the cause of God’s vindication being wrought upon Israel under the form of enemy armies marching against them. Aside from his constant rebuking of the Pharisees’ hypocrisy, this relatively small act of driving the merchants out of the Temple was the most forthcoming that Our Lord could have been within the actual circumstances that He found Himself.

In our day piety makes its requirements known to us more vigorously still. Still, we are faced with these same pharisees, puffed up with their own importance and filling their dossiers according to law where it suits them, yet having no thought for justice; for the contemporary poor and the widow with a simple faith seeking only to worship God, nor for the most hideous heresies and power plays that prevail which they, indirectly or the house of God, the city of God, to be collapsing before the threats that arrive from directly, support. Still, we have the zealots who exasperate matters in their misplaced zeal, risking a lack in generosity for neighbour (cf. RB chapter 72). Then we wonder, indeed weep, to see without.

For all His accusations against the Pharisees, Our Lord recognised that they sit on the chair of Moses and must therefore be obeyed. But obedience can never constrain us to act contrary to faith and morals. Obedience does not, cannot, require that we permit them to put us to death on false or exaggerated charges (cf. Daniel 13). The zealots, by contrast, received limited rebuttal from Our Lord howsoever misguided they might have been. They were not imposing unjust burdens on the people trying to worship God in peace and in good faith.

How then can we defend the dignity of the Church? In what manner are we to toss the tables of the money changers? To drive out the thieving merchants? We must hold fast to justice, to the fostering of the faithful in their noble and simple desire to worship God and work to His glory. Through our real and practical charity we must faithfully live the Gospel despite the enemies abounding from without and from within. We must work for the fulfilment of the missionary imperative given by Our Lord that is so often denied.

Thus can we truly live the virtue of piety, fully participating in the life of the Church at every level required, each in proportion to the vocation that is ours. +