On Holy Monday, I sit with one of the most jarring scenes in the Gospels. Jesus enters the Temple — the holiest place in Jerusalem — and what he finds there is not worship. It is a marketplace. Merchants hawking animals. Money changers turning profit from pilgrims. The sacred has been colonized by the transactional, and I am struck by how deeply I recognize this — not only in history, but in the institutions of my own time, and if I am honest, in myself.

Jesus overturns the tables. Not calmly. Not apologetically. He acts from righteous anger — the anger of love confronting betrayal. And I hear his words as if they are spoken directly into the noise of my own life: “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.”

I believe this is what the Lord is asking me to see today. The exploitation of the sacred is not only a first-century problem. When the Church — when I — allow what is holy to be crowded out by power, performance, or self-protection, the tables need overturning still. So many people are disoriented because the places meant to offer refuge became places of transaction. I feel that disorientation too. And I believe the Lord is inviting me, on this Holy Monday, to let him in to do the same work in me.

“The soul is the temple of God. If you defile that temple, God will destroy you — not out of vengeance, but because what is corrupted cannot house what is holy.” — St. John Chrysostom

This lands heavily with me. Because I, too, am a temple. St. Paul writes that my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within me. And if that is true, then the question the Lord presses upon me today is one I cannot avoid: what has crept into the temple of my heart that does not belong there?

When I look honestly within, I find my own money changers. Resentments I have nursed for years. Anxieties I have mistaken for wisdom. Distractions I invited in and never asked to leave. The low hum of bitterness, the clutter of false identities, the noise of a life that has slowly, without my fully noticing, become very crowded. These are loud. They take up space. And I know they make it harder for me to hear the still, small voice of God.

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless, until it rests in you.” — St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

Augustine names what I feel. When my interior life feels like a crowded market — noisy, exhausting, never quite at peace — I am beginning to understand that this restlessness is a signal. Something has taken up space that belongs to God alone. Holy Monday does not ask me to be perfect. It asks me to be honest. And I believe the Lord is asking me today to name what tables need overturning in me.

Jesus did not destroy the Temple. He restored it to its purpose. That is what I believe he wants to do in me. Not to condemn me, but to clear me. Not to shame me, but to sanctify me. A house of prayer is not an empty house — it is a house filled with the right Presence. And I want that. I want to be that.

A Question for Holy Monday

Sit in stillness for a moment. Ask yourself: What in my life has turned the temple of my heart into a marketplace? What is taking up sacred space that belongs to God alone? What one thing, if cleared away, would make more room for prayer, for rest, for love?

I do not have to clear everything at once. I only need to begin. Let Jesus turn one table today.

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