Never Enough
Third Sunday of Lent
I have been discerning to enter the seminary since I was in my secondary school, but I thought, like my other siblings, I’ve got to have some sort of tertiary level qualification first, so I left home to do my diploma. After finishing my diploma, I worked in a pharmacy, but then I thought it is necessary to have a bachelor’s degree so I entered the university, after which I start to work and change jobs from PR officer, to social worker, then teacher and so on. I just couldn’t stay in 1 company because I’ve always wanted something more, and I was not satisfied with my state of life at that time. These were the factors that have held me back for 12 years before I decided to join the friars.
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 fulfilment that doesn't wear out. Everything we do is directed towards that end : happiness. It's like we have a homing device built into our hearts, and it keeps drawing us towards fulfilment and satisfaction. We keep seeking new activities, accomplishments, relationships, adventures - all because we feel this interior drive for fulfilment, meaning, and happiness. And I think, this is also what motivated Friar Cosmas’ cousin, if you remember his story last Sunday, to climb mountains and hills. Well, this interior drive that we have is a good thing because God made us that way. He put the homing device in our hearts, because he wants us to find that satisfaction and fulfilment, that happiness.
God designed the human heart to find its lasting fulfilment in what the Catechism calls "communion with God". 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 there is a problem.
We have had a tendency to look for this fulfilment in the wrong places. Our fallen human nature tends to look for it in career success, money, pleasure, power, popularity... But deep in our hearts, we know we will not find fulfilment in these things. Those things are fine in themselves, and they have their place in the human story. But they cannot substitute God!
That's why Jesus gets so worked up in today's Gospel. The Temple was set aside as a place where people could go to pray, to encounter God and develop their friendship with him. Just like what we are doing here and now. 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.
I was not able to find satisfaction in my job even with the good pay I was receiving, even after changing jobs for several times. My journey continues as I move into a deeper relationship with Jesus.
No one is completely satisfied in life, completely fulfilled; we are all searching for that happiness that we were made for. St Augustine expressed this beautifully when he wrote: "Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord."
An American philosopher and writer, Henry David Thoreau, expressed this same idea less optimistically. He wrote, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." The human heart is hungry, but in this fallen world people don't always remember what it's hungry for.
Jesus came to put hope into that desperation, to give direction to that restlessness.
Only friendship with Him can lead us to the satisfaction we long for, not because it ends our search - that won't happen until heaven - but because it puts us on the sure path, the dependable, hope-filled path.
A good friend always wishes the best for the other. So do Jesus, He wants us to find the fulfilment and satisfaction we yearn for in communion with God. But to have that deep relationship with God, we have to let Jesus clear away the false gods that are cluttering our hearts, and He offers us a few ways to do so.
In our relationship with our friends, we experience not just joy, but sometimes, pain too, and that makes our friendship even stronger. This is why Jesus 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 this 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. I am not sure if you want to hear this, like I sometimes don’t, out of laziness or my own ignorance. That other option, it’s called confession, the voluntary cleansing of the temple through the sacrament of reconciliation. In confession, we admit and surrender the clutters that is turning the temple into a place of confusion, noise and tension, instead of one where we encounter God and discover His love.
Dearest sisters and brothers in Christ, Lent is the time of renewal, a time to review God’s temple in us. So as we continue our Lenten journey, let us reflect on what are the cluttering distractions that needed to be cleared in our hearts, hence enabling us to put our focus on God. May we have the courage to surrender these clutters and passionately cleanse our hearts, just like Jesus, when He cleansed the temple.
