We all want to be satisfied in life. That's what happiness is, really, the achievement of satisfaction, of spiritual contentment, of a sense of fulfillment that doesn't wear out. Everything we do is directed towards that end.
It's like we have a homing device built into our hearts, and it keeps drawing us towards fulfillment and satisfaction. We keep seeking new activities, accomplishments, relationships, adventures - all because we feel this interior drive for fulfillment, meaning, and happiness.
This is a good thing. God made us that way. He put the homing device in our hearts, because he wants us to find that satisfaction and fulfillment, that happiness.
But there is a problem. Ever since sin entered into the world, we have had a tendency to look for this fulfillment in the wrong places.
God designed the human heart to find its lasting fulfillment in a deep, personal, ongoing friendship with him - in what the Catechism calls "communion with God" (#45). This is why the first three commandments, as we read in today's First Reading, have to do with our relationship with God - that's the most important thing.
But our fallen human nature tends to look for it in other places: career success, money, pleasure, power, popularity... But that is wrong.
Those things are fine in themselves, and they have their place in the human story. But they cannot substitute God! Only God can satisfy our deepest longing.
And that's why Jesus gets so worked up in today's Gospel passage.
The Temple was set aside as a place where people could go to pray, to encounter God and develop their friendship with him. But all of these merchants and money changers had made it into a mall, a place of buying and selling things!
The place that should have helped people find God had gradually become full of obstacles to finding God. Jesus passionately wants us to find God, because he wants us to find true satisfaction.
Two Methods for Cleansing the Soul
Jesus wants our friendship, because the only place we can find the fulfillment and satisfaction we yearn for is in communion with God.
And he wants this for us so much, that sometimes he goes to extreme measures in order to cleanse the temple of our hearts.
Many times, this is why he permits suffering in our lives.
When we suffer, we are forced out of our comfort zone; we learn our limitations; we discover that the promises of this world's politicians, advertisers, and self-help gurus just don't hold up under pressure.
When that happens, we can become more open to hearing God's voice, to stop pretending that we don't really need God and start leaning more completely on God.
But Jesus doesn't want to have to resort to extreme measures all the time.
And so, he gives us another option, an ongoing opportunity for us to work with him in cleansing out the temple of our hearts. It's called confession.
The sacrament of reconciliation is a voluntary cleansing of the temple. As Christians, our hearts are the real temple of God - the Holy Spirit and the Blessed Trinity dwell within us.
But our sins and selfish actions and habits can turn that temple into a place of confusion, noise, and tension, instead of one where we encounter God and discover his love.
Whenever we make a good confession, we give Jesus free entrance into our hearts, so that he can cleanse them, and fill them up again with the light and strength of his friendship.
Jesus wants to lead us to the meaning and fulfillment we long for. Today, let's promise that we'll give him the chance to do so.