Truly valuing God's creation

One of my memories as a child growing up and going to Bible school was seeing illustrations of an angry Jesus, particularly in the passage about the cleansing of the temple, our gospel today.

This story is present in all the four gospels. The version in the synoptic gospels is short and a bit low key, ending with Jesus saying, “My house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.” Full stop. In contrast, the version from the gospel of John, which is the longest, the most emphatic and graphic, says Jesus “made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, ‘Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!’” Exclamation point. Seeing Jesus angry is not comfortable. But his holy desire was to defend the sanctity of the temple, as a house of prayer, a house of God, against the selfishness and dishonesty of the market. A manifestation of righteous anger. 

Today, the same vices of “the market” have spread ever more widely to the many aspects of our lives. Through several features of our modern way of living, such as capitalism, a culture of convenience, our reliance on personal smartphones and gadgets, “the market” has found its way, ever so quietly and unnoticeably, into the many corners of our lives. And thus, perhaps we are in need once again of Jesus’ righteous anger, to cleanse us of the selfish and dishonest values of the market. 

One first thing to say is how the market has degraded creation. The whole of God’s creation is not only the work of God’s hands, but it also communicates to us the presence of God. Through creation, we are kept alive, and surrounded by this world, we are able to love and thrive. However, we have turned the whole of creation into a large market. Practically everything is for sale! Lands, plants, living animals, dead animals, fresh water, are all for sale, and maybe fresh air too will be sold one day. We have commodified creation, giving everything a monetary number, to be purchased, used, and owned. Thus, we have removed the sacred in creation, desecrated Mother Earth, referring to the earth as “natural resources”. We need God to cleanse us of our materialistic ways, to teach us once again what really is holy and essential in this life. 

A second point is how the market has divided our community. Our immediate community is essential to our well-being. We derive our identity and culture from our communities. It is certainly a source of support and help when we are faced with challenges. We also experience and respond to God as a community, as a universal Church, as brothers and sisters in Christ. However, the market has somehow been succeeding in dividing our community and pitting us up against each other. For example, our smartphones, through which we access different platforms of social media, provide us with an increasingly customized and personal experience, creating a unique perception of the world. Common experiences of years past are now not so common. We now have atomized experiences, fractured cultures, creating ever smaller personal micro-cultures, making unified positions harder and harder to achieve. Our beliefs, whatever they are, are no longer checked against our elders and our peers in community. Rather, they are reinforced by algorithms that dictate what kind of information we consume. And in the absence of shared experiences, it is much easier to have polarized camps. Thus, we again need God to cleanse us of our divisiveness, to teach us once again that a united family and community is a grace from God. 

Finally, a third example is how the market has polluted our consciousness. It is quite obvious that we should value what is true. Truth is what we normally search for, what we trust, and what we base our lives on. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” However, the market is not about what is true. The truth, is a value, only insofar as it helps the market achieve its own objectives. Once it becomes more of an obstruction, the market has no need for truth. What we have now is a pollution of ideas, where facts are interlaced with “alternative-facts”, and perception is more important than reality. Some say we have entered a post-truth era, a time when what is true matters less than what goes viral. This becomes very real when false perceptions help the wrong kind of people get elected and harm the lives of the general public, especially the poor. Thus, we need God to cleanse us and our collective consciousness, to bring back a valuing for what is true and right in our world. 

In this mass, we pray for Jesus’ cleansing once again, perhaps Jesus with his righteous anger, to overturn tables and accepted practices of our modern world, and reclaim God’s holy temple. The path we beg for is to return to seeing creation as sacred, to deepen sincere communication and sharing and get back a real sense of a united community, and to recover the place of truth among us.

May St Cecilia, virgin and martyr, a symbol of perseverance and purity intercede for us. 

This homily was delivered by Fr Nañawa SJ during the daily mass on Radyo Katipunan last 22 November 2024.