Tuesday, February 28 : Saint Augustine

The apostle Paul says: “The Temple of God, which you are, is holy” (1 Cor 3:17), that is to say: all you who believe in Christ, believing even to loving. (…) All who thus believe are the living stones of which God’s temple is built (1 Pt 2:5); they are like the imperishable wood of which the ark was built that the flood could not overwhelm (Gn 6:14). This temple – the people of God, human persons themselves – is the place where God answers those who pray. People who pray to God outside this temple cannot have their prayers for the peace of the Jerusalem above answered even though they are answered regarding particular material things that God grants even to pagans. (…) But it is an altogether different thing to have one’s prayers answered in the matter of eternal life. This is only granted to those who pray inside God’s temple. For someone who prays within God’s temple prays within the peace of the Church, in the unity of Christ’s body, since the Body of Christ is built up of the multitude of believers spread over all the world. (…) And someone who prays in the peace of the Church prays “in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:23) of which the former Temple was only a symbol. In fact it was for our instruction that our Lord cast out of the Temple those men who were only seeking their own interest and who only went there to buy and sell. If that first Temple had to undergo this purification then it is clear that the Body of Christ too, the true temple, also contains buyers and sellers among those who pray there, that is to say, people only seeking “their own interests and not those of Jesus Christ” (Phil 2,21). (…) But the time will come when the Lord will cast out all those sins.

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team