COMMENTARY.
The Divinity of Jesus Christ is in this chapter proved 1) by His words, 2) by His deeds, and 3) by the prophecy He made.
1. In the Temple and in the presence of many leading Israelites, Jesus distinctly declared Himself to be the Son of God, calling the Temple the house of His Father. If God be His Father, He must be the Son of God.
2. He proved His Divinity by the power and majesty of his indignation when He drove the buyers and sellers from the Temple, quelling in the most wonderful way every sign of resentment or resistance on their part (Origen).
3. He showed His Divinity, or, to speak more exactly, His omniscience, by distinctly foretelling that the Jews would kill Him (destroying the temple of His Body), and that He would raise His dead Body to life again on the third day.
Different ways of receiving grace. Our Lord’s miracles served to increase the faith of the disciples, who perceived in His action in the Temple the fulfilment of the prophecy that the Messias would be full of zeal for the house of God. The miracle and our Lord’s direct testimony to His own Divinity were likewise a grace for the Jews who happened to be in the outer court of the Temple. The grace of faith was offered to them, and they resisted it: they would not believe, and demanded a fresh miracle in confirmation of the first. God gives His grace to all men. But man has the power of resisting it.
The Body of Christ was the living Temple of God, because in Him dwelt the fulness of the Godhead; He being the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, with all power, wisdom and holiness. Our bodies, too, become the temples of the Holy Ghost by Baptism and Confirmation, because God the Holy Ghost dwells in us by His grace. ‘'Know you not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? But if any man violate the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which you are” (1 Cor. 3, 16 17). This living temple of God is defiled by every mortal sin, especially by those against holy purity.
Behaviour in the House of God. Jesus, full of a holy zeal, reproved and punished the buyers and sellers who were behaving themselves irreverently in the outer court of the Temple. A Catholic church is far more holy than was the Jewish Temple; and Christians who behave without reverence inside, or near it, deserve sharper reproof and heavier punishment than did the sellers in the Temple.
Holy Scripture is not the only source of faith. Scripture, after relating the purifying of the Temple, says that Jesus performed many miracles in Jerusalem and the neighbourhood; but what these miracles were, the holy Evangelists do not tell us. This shows us that not
