Zeal for His Fathers' Temple

The following gospel reading from the second chapter of John showed up recently at a daily mass:

Just before the Jewish Passover Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and in the Temple he found people selling cattle and sheep and pigeons, and the money changers sitting at their counters there. Making a whip out of some cord, he drove them all out of the Temple, cattle and sheep as well, scattered the money changers' coins, knocked their tables over and said to the pigeon-sellers, 'Take all this out of here and stop turning my Father's house into a market.' Then his disciples remembered the words of scripture: Zeal for your house will devour me.

After reading this, I was reminded of the reading from Corinthians:

Avoid immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.

So if our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, might not Jesus have also been referring to our bodies in the above gospel reading? Whenever we sin, are we not acting like the money changers at the Temple? We are desecrating our own temple, in particular with those physical sins. And what did Jesus do? He got physical. He got out his whip. He turned over the tables. He scattered the coins. He drove out the money changers and the cattle and other beasts.

What are the money changers in our bodies? What are the beasts desecrating our temple? Lust? Gluttony? Drugs or alcohol? Sloth? Foul language? We have to get physical with that sin. Drive it out. This is where mortification comes in. The saints went to extremes, far beyond the kind of fasting to which we are accustomed. The Little Flower was said to have used the discipline (a small whip) on her back to the point where she bled. Others wore sackcloth, hairshirts, the celice. I have read of saints who carried small containers of ashes with them, in case they were invited to eat and they found the food too extravagant.

Of course, mortification at that level can quickly become masochism without the careful guidance of a spiritual director, whom St. Therese would never have disobeyed. There are, however, some forms of mortification more suitable to a father or mother.

Fasting is the most popular form of mortification, and it doesn't need to be left to Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Some devotions call for a fast each Wednesday. Fasting is always a good idea, if one is following the Church's guidelines as well as common sense.

Abstinence is another excellent way to perform mortification. Abstinence from meat is a Catholic tradition - formerly a requirement - that our family has recently rededicated ourselves to. How about abstinence from candy, rich food, desserts? In the Old Testament, Daniel did a penance for 21 days, in which he abstained from meat and rich food, and he was rewarded with visions.

Other forms of mortifications for lay folk: How about a cold shower? Members of Opus Dei sometimes sleep on the floor. Any kind of small sacrifice of physical comforts can help us to build strength of discipline over our bodies, giving us the ability to conquer temptation when faced with it, and drive sin right out of our temple.