Main news for 15 May 2022

The image of Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers, those ancient exchange offices, and the benches of the dove sellers, Zion's version of a candle stall, is so unfamiliar that in the course of life Christians often have to answer perplexed questions: why does He act this way? This sharply contradicts the sugary little face of the religious painting called "the third half of the nineteenth century," but not the real Son of God. And yet indeed, the Lord, of whom it is said that He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick (Isa. 42:3), would seem not to act in such a way.

What Jesus does at this moment is called a prophetic action. Thus Hosea and Isaiah give symbolic names to their children as witnesses to the fulfillment of prophecies; thus Jeremiah buys a field in Anathoth when all Israel is about to be occupied any day. These are visible images that enter the consciousness of people who do not want to listen, who have ears and do not hear. Yet this action of Christ is not a prophecy, but the fulfillment of a prophecy: "Zeal for Your house consumes Me" (Ps. 68:10), says the well-known messianic psalm. The evangelist John, speaking on behalf of the disciples in the second chapter of his Gospel, writes that they understood this action of Jesus exactly this way: He acts as the Messiah, according to the prophecies, must act.

Honestly, this truly is a distinguishing sign of the Messiah, because all of us treat social propriety and stereotypes of sugary piety with far greater reverence than we treat the holiness of the Almighty. For He may forgive us our irreverence, but society will not forgive rebuke, just as it did not forgive Jesus.