Third Sunday of Lent

Mass Readings

• First Reading Exodus 20:1-17
• Responsorial Psalm Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 11
• Second Reading 1 Corinthians 1:22-25
• Gospel John 2:13-25

Open the Mass Readings on USCCB.org →

USCCB lists the Year B readings as primary for 2027. Parishes celebrating the Scrutinies with catechumens use the Year A readings instead (the Samaritan woman, the man born blind, the raising of Lazarus), which are always permitted.

Step Into the Story

The Ten Commandments come at Sinai, probably in the thirteenth century B.C., and they open not with an order but with a reminder: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” Hittite treaties began the same way, the great king recounting his favors before laying down his terms. God borrows the form and fills it. Herod the Great had begun rebuilding the Temple around 20 B.C., and “forty-six years” later, likely in 28 A.D., work was still going on.

1. 13th c. B.C.The Law given at Sinai
2. c. 960 B.C.Solomon builds the Temple
3. c. 20 B.C.Herod begins the Temple
4. 14 A.D.Tiberius becomes emperor
5. This week’s scene: c. 28 A.D.Jesus clears the Temple

Come up to the Temple for Passover with Jesus and the crowds. Herod’s platform covers some 35 acres, and most of it is the great outer court where Gentiles may pray. Today it sounds like a cattle market. Hear oxen lowing, sheep bleating, doves fluttering in their cages, and the clink and haggle at the money changers’ tables, where pilgrims swap Roman and Greek coins for Tyrian shekels, the silver the Temple tax requires. Smell dung and straw under the colonnades.

Now look at Jesus. He has stopped. He has taken up some lengths of cord and begins, deliberately, to twist them together. The traders have not noticed yet. Stand still beside Him, and watch His hands.

Encounter the Lord

Walk into the Temple courts with Jesus at Passover. The noise is overwhelming: cattle, sheep, doves, the clink of coins. Jesus makes a whip of cords and drives them out, overturning tables. “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”

This is not a loss of temper. It is love for His Father, and love for the people who came there to pray. The commandments given on Sinai were meant to keep God first and to protect our neighbor. Jesus now claims to be the true Temple, the place where God dwells among us. And through Baptism you have become a temple of His Spirit. What would He overturn if He walked into your heart today?

This week, make a careful examination of conscience using the Ten Commandments, and go to Confession before Easter. Let Christ clear out what does not belong.

Know Your Faith

Jesus and the Law

Jesus did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it (CCC 577). Its perfect fulfillment could be the work only of the divine Lawgiver, born subject to the Law; in Him the Law is written on the heart (CCC 580).

Christ, the True Temple

Jesus had deep respect for the Temple and drove out the merchants out of jealous love for His Father (CCC 583-584). The Temple prefigured His own mystery: His Body would be the definitive Temple (CCC 586, 593).

The New Law of the Gospel

The Law of the Gospel fulfills, refines and surpasses the Old Law (CCC 1967). It does not abolish the moral commandments but reveals their full truth and reforms the heart, the root of human acts (CCC 1968).

The Power of the Cross

God revealed His almighty power in the voluntary humiliation and Resurrection of His Son; Christ crucified is the power and wisdom of God (CCC 272). The Church extends Christ’s reign only by the way of penance and the cross (CCC 853).