By FR. JAMES ALTMAN
Dear family, we just heard about Jesus making a whip and driving out the bad guys from the Temple. It’s a historical fact. It happened just before the bad guys orchestrated His crucifixion. Bad guys always crucify Jesus — directly on Calvary, or indirectly by persecuting or martyring His faithful ones. So, the question we can ask ourselves now is, whom would Jesus drive out of the Temple in our day? Who are the bad guys in our temples today?
We know who the bad guys are. They are the ones who fail to keep His Father’s Commandments. These Commandments are not a confusing thing. There only are ten, and they have been around since Moses, about 1,400 years before the Incarnation. We now are 2,021 years after the Incarnation. Any possible confusion — not that there should have been, or is, any confusion — but any possible confusion has been resolved over the past 3,400 years.
As an aside, that is why any modernist loser of a lay person, theologian, or cleric is indeed such a loser. We do not take the approach, “Well, thank God Martin Luther came along 1,500 years after the Incarnation and set us straight about the faith. Pity those poor souls for the first 1,500 years who didn’t know what they were talking about!” No, we don’t do that. We also do not look at any modernist theologian or cleric and say, “Thank God this person came along and explained to us that there really isn’t a Hell we have to worry about, or that irregular relationships are not frowned upon by Almighty God.”
What we do is what we always have done, which is to say, “The road to Hell is broad and those who choose it are many,” and we say what Jesus said to the woman at the well, “Go and sin no more.”
As an aside, did you see the meme about that broad road? It reads, “Devil Requests Stimulus Funds to Widen the Road to Hell to Meet Increased Demand.”
So, back to that whip: Who are the bad guys Jesus would drive out of the Temple in our day? Sacred Scriptures help us to find the answer, and we do start with the Ten Commandments. Dear family, we don’t have to be rocket scientists to know that the Hell we see all around us is due to the failure of so many to keep the Commandments.
Of course it’s hard to focus on keeping the Commandments when even a bishop said to me that the bishops as a whole have failed because they have not taught Catholics right from wrong for the past fifty years. That is why we now have some shepherds misleading us into thinking the road to Heaven is broad and dare we hope that everyone finds it? What part of Jesus’ teaching — “How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life and those who find it are few” (Matt. 7:14) — do these people not understand?
The failure to teach and lead over the last 50 years is exactly why many Catholics are exactly the same as those people that St. Paul said find the cross a stumbling block, or utter foolishness. As it was in St. Paul’s day, so it is in ours. Which brings us right to that scene where Jesus made a whip and drove out the bad guys — when Jesus cleansed the Temple. Given the wreck-ovations of our sanctuaries in the postconciliar period and the turning away from the worship of Almighty God, is exactly why the Catholic Church is way overdue for Jesus to make a whip out of cords and drive out the bad guys who have turned us away from God’s Truth.
Yet, any pastor who speaks thusly will hear the same ignorant response as Jesus heard from the Jews when He drove out the bad guys: “What sign can you show us for doing this?” In other words, they would ask, “Who do you think you are?” The answer to that question in Jesus’ day — and the answer now — is the same.
I’m a preacher of the true Gospel of the real Jesus the Christ (cf. Gal. 1:8-9: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach [to you] a Gospel other than the one that we preached to you, let that one be accursed!”
As we have said before, and now I say again, if anyone preaches to you a Gospel other than the one that you received, let that one be accursed!
On that day He drove out the bad guys 2,000 years ago, Jesus responded to a request for a sign by saying, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” We have known for 2,000 years now what Jesus meant. What Jesus really was saying was: “This is the Sign I will show you,” and, as we hear in one of the Eucharistic Prayers, He stretched out His arms between Heaven and Earth to become the lasting sign of His Covenant.
Dear family, so many Catholics out there are clueless about all this because too many shepherds of the Church have not made it clear: The crucifixion was and is because of our sinning against the Ten Commandments. If there is no sin — if we are not sinful — then there is absolutely no point to the Passion of the Christ — there absolutely is no point to Jesus’ redemptive self-sacrifice. That is why, in a nutshell, the holy cross is not revered by many today, and why so many do not pick up their own crosses daily. They do not think they need the redemption of the holy cross in the first place, thus they do not think they need to take on their own crosses either.
Then, as now, to the many, the cross is a stumbling block and is utter foolishness. But to us — we who know and are aware of our sinfulness — the holy cross means everything because it means Almighty God loves us infinitely. In other words, the crucifixion is His testimonial to Divine Love. The crucifixion is exactly why Jesus the Lord then, as now, has the right to drive out the bad guys from the Temple.
Preach The Gospel
So again, let us ask ourselves, who are the Bad Guys that Jesus would drive out of our Temples today?
Understand one thing about what’s going on around us, dear family. In Jesus’ day, the bad guys did not think they were bad guys. Members of the Sanhedrin did not think they were bad guys. But just look what was going on in the Temple. The Sanhedrin received a direct benefit from the money-changing because a temple tax had to be paid.
If there were bad guys then, there are bad guys now. So again, whom would Jesus the Lord drive out of the Temple in our day? How do we identify them?
We identify them now in the same way as they were identified back then. They preach a different Gospel than the Gospel of Jesus (cf. Galatians chapter 1). And it seems very clear that they preach a different Gospel because they do not want to upset either the government or the people!
Oh yes, dear family, the bad guys in our Church today do not preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ because — bottom line — they think preaching the Truth actually will affect their “bottom line.”
Listen and understand: The price shepherds put on preaching the Gospel Truth to your eternal souls is found in the grasping at collection plates and “tax exemptions.”
(For the record, the government never had, and does not have now, a constitutional right to tax the Church. Back when lobbyists pushed for, and obtained, a constitutional amendment for an income tax, they placated the faithful by saying “no worries, we will give you an ‘exemption’.” The fact is that the government did not have then, nor do they have now, the right to “remove” the exemption. They cannot tax churches, period. Thus, no shepherd should labor under the threat of the “removal” of a tax exemption.)
Again, bottom line, those are the two big reasons some shepherds preach a different Gospel than the Gospel of the narrow road of obeying God’s Commandments. That is why they preach a different Gospel than the Gospel of picking up our crosses daily. That is why they preach a different Gospel than the Gospel of self-sacrifice out of love.
The true Gospel is the Gospel of the holy cross, as we can see over the last 50 years and, stunningly, over the last 11 months, it actually is a stumbling block and foolishness for many shepherds in the Church. Dear family, then as now, Jesus needed, or needs, to fashion a whip and cleanse the Temple of those who are more concerned about money than about the Gospel!
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