Изгнание торгующих из храма

When the Most Pure Ever-Virgin Mother of God asked her Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to help the need of a poor man at a wedding in Cana, the Lord said to her: “My hour has not yet come,” that is, I have not yet declared myself as the Messiah, as the Savior of the World sent from God. This hour struck when the Lord Jesus Christ, after a short stay in Galilee with selected disciples, came to Jerusalem for the Easter holiday and entered the church. But this entry into the field of the ministry commanded to him by the Father was not joyful for Him. “He found that oxen, sheep and doves were being sold in the church, and money changers were sitting. And making a scourge of ropes, he drove everyone out of the church, including the sheep and oxen, and scattered the money from the money changers, and overturned their tables. And he said to those selling doves: “Take this from here, and do not make My Father’s house a house of trade.” “At this point His disciples remembered that it was written: Zeal for Your house consumes Me” (Ps. 69:10). The Jews could not help but see in this event the revelation of Divine power, but they did not accept admonition. The bandage was on their eyes: their eyes in this case were clouded by the passion of love of money. And they did not expect a denunciator of their iniquities and vices in the Messiah, but a glorious conqueror who would conquer the nations and raise them to the heights of earthly greatness. Reproached at the same time by their conscience for allowing such disgrace in a most sacred place, they found themselves asking the Lord only: “What sign will you prove to us that you have the power to do this?” What other sign did they need when they saw face to face the Power that no one and nothing could resist? “Jesus answered and said to them, Destroy this church, and in three days I will raise it up. He spoke of the church of His body." The Jews limited themselves to these words with only an objection: “This church (Epsalim) took thirty-six years to build, and will You raise it up in three days?” (John 2:13...23). The Lord’s disciples themselves saw the deep meaning of the Savior’s words only after His resurrection. The Resurrection is the highest and only miracle of its kind by which the Lord proved His divine greatness. All other miracles, no matter how great they were, in comparison with this miracle are only signs - private manifestations of the omnipotent Divine power inherent in Him. In a clear connection with the question of the Jews and with the answer of the Savior are the words of the Lord spoken about the Jews on another occasion: “An evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign. And no sign will be given to him except the sign of the prophet Jonah” (Matthew 12:39), that is, a three-day burial and resurrection from the dead. The Jews, however, did not forget the words of the Lord Savior, but used them only to accuse Him, and allowed themselves to distort them, according to their evil intention: “We heard Him say: I will destroy this church made with hands, and in three days I will build another not made with hands” (Mark 14:58). Thus, passions are capable of not only hiding the truth from human eyes, but also presenting different ways to distort it. Expulsion of traders from the church. From a painting by Prof. Tikhobrazov Nikolai Ivanovich (1818 – 1874). St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. You might be interested in: