And when Jesus had done this He spoke to those who sold doves and said: "Take these things away." It was His will to cleanse His temple. It was as if He had said: I am the owner of this temple, and I alone shall dwell in it and be master of it. And what is this temple in which God alone shall rule with all power and according to His own will? It is man's soul, which He has created in close resemblance to Himself, according to His word: "Let us make man after Our image and likeness." (Gen. 1, 26) And this likeness of man's soul to God is so close, that nothing else is to be compared with it for close resemblance to Him in Heaven or on earth. This is why God will have our soul free and clear of everything but Himself alone, and when that is done He is well pleased to make His abode there alone.
Who were those that bought and sold in the temple, and who are they that do so now? And take notice that I am to speak only of those buyers and sellers in the temple who are good people, and who are nevertheless scourged out of His temple by the Lord; not gross sinners or such as are consciously in a state of mortal sin; and yet they are buyers and sellers. They are souls who, indeed, guard against grievous sins, and would do good works for God's glory; they fast and pray and keep vigils and do other good things. But what is their motive? It is that God would in return do good things to them, bestow on them the favors they wish. They are, therefore, self-seekers; they are merchandisers with God, as anyone can see. They give that they may get. They must traffic with our Lord. And meanwhile in all their trading with God they are self-deceived. For what is there of all they possess and trade with but God has given it to them? God owes them nothing, no matter what they may give Him or do for Him. Whatever they are, they are from God; whatever they have, they have from God, and are nothing and have nothing of themselves.
Hence I say again, God owes them nothing for all they may do for Him or give Him. He has given them all they have willingly out of His free grace, not on account of their works or gifts. They have nothing of their own to give Him; no power of their own bestowal wherewith to work for Him, as Christ says: "Without Me you can do nothing." (John 15, 5) How dull and foolish are such men to think that they really trade with the Lord! They perceive the truth of Divine things scarcely at all, and hence the Lord scourges them out of His temple. Light and darkness can have no fellowship. God in His very essence is truth and light, and when He enters His temple He drives ignorance and darkness out of it, revealing Himself in all His brightness. When truth enters in and is recognized, then trafficking must go out; truth can tolerate no trafficking with God. God is not selfish, but in all His works He is free, being directed wholly by perfect love. And thus acts every man who is united to God. In all that he does he is free and unselfish, acting purely from love, never asking why and wherefore; that is to say, never seeking his own, but only God and His glory; and in all this God is working in him.
And let me insist: As long as a man in all his good works seeks or desires as his controlling motive what God may give him as a recompense, so long is he like the traffickers in the temple. If thou wilt be quit and done with all such trafficking, then do all the good that thou dost for God's praise alone, and stand as entirely free as if there were to be no return made thee. Then thy good deeds become entirely spiritual and Godlike. Then are all traffickers driven out of the temple of thy soul. God alone dwells in the soul of a man that in his good works takes Him and Him alone into account. This is then the purifying of the soul from all self-seeking, God and His honor becoming the end and purpose of all.
But this Gospel points out to us a yet higher grade of disinterestedness. For there are some who have a pure intention in their well-doing, and yet are hindered from attaining a high state of perfection; namely, those who keep up a less blameworthy traffic with creatures, like those dealers in doves whose chairs the Lord overthrew in the temple. The traffic in doves was well meant at first, and yet it was unseemly; and it became the occasion of avarice rather than a help to worship of God in the temple. So it is with some men, who have an upright intention and serve God without self-seeking. Yet they still yield to a feeling of ownership in their good deeds. They insist on doing them in a certain sense mechanically, and strictly according to time and place and number and routine, and according to specified plans, and this hinders their coming to the hest spiritual state. They should hold their souls free from all such things, just as our Saviour Himself did, and be ever ready to begin anew, without waiting for certain times or going to certain places. They should give themselves over to the guidance of the heavenly Father just as Christ did; yea, obedient to the least intimation of His holy will, determined on one thing only to be perfectly under the loving influence of His fatherly heart. Thus one is led to a life of the truest perfection, unhindered by methods and arrangements of his own, only anxious to yield instantly, and, as it were, to the beck and nod of God's will; and in the same spirit to return God's gifts back again into the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ with all praise and thanksgiving. Then it comes to pass that all hindrances to spiritual progress are taken away; from such a soul even the doves and their venders are expelled — all sense of proprietorship whatsoever, even that which is least blameworthy, is done away, and a man seeks himself in nothing at all. Our Lord is determined that no one shall make any disturbance in His temple; He will permit no running about here and there, as St. Matthew tells us. Which means that a spiritual man must purify his motives, until they are clear of every obstacle that may divert him from advancing even a single step in perfection.
And when this purification of the temple of the soul has been accomplished, and all ignorance and proprietorship are cleansed away, then God's work in it shines so beautiful and so bright that it excels the glory of any other of His creations. No beauty can outshine that of such a soul, save only the uncreated beauty of God Himself, whom it resembles more than any other creature can. No angel can be like it; not even the highest of them; for, though it has much resemblance to it, it is yet not quite like it. For to the progress of an angel there is now, in a certain sense, a limit fixed as to the beatific vision, whereas this soul can continue to grow more and more perfect as long as it lives in time.
Suppose a man who is still in this life gifted with the virtue of a certain angel; his freedom and his opportunities are such as to enable him to advance every instant beyond the angel in perfection. God alone is free with uncreated liberty, and so is the soul free, but not in uncreated liberty; and herein is there a peculiar resemblance between God and the soul. And when the soul departs this life, it is absorbed in light uncreated — in God — then it must attain to union with Him by full knowledge of Him. And this, as we have already shown, is begun by our Lord Jesus Christ, when He enters the soul and drives out of it the buyers and sellers, and begins intimately to speak to it.
Dear children, rest assured that if any one undertakes to speak in the temple — that is, in our soul — except Jesus alone, then does Jesus immediately become silent. He no longer feels at home there; indeed, it is now not His home, for it entertains strange guests and holds converse with them. Not only so; but if Jesus is to speak, the soul itself must be silent, and do nothing but listen to Him. The moment it sits still and listens, He begins to speak. What does He say He says, “I am: I am the Father's Word.” And then in the same Word thus spoken the Father Himself speaks, the entire Divine nature is heard — all that is God, all that God's Word is to God's self, perfect in self-knowledge and infinite in power. God is infinitely perfect in His utterance to the soul, for the Word He utters is Himself; it is the Second Divine person of the God head, of the same nature with the Father.
And in speaking this Divine Word, God utters all reasonable beings in created existence, thus forming them like unto His uncreated Word, as It ever dwells within Him. All the brightness of created intelligences is made after the image of the glory of this uncreated Word of God. And this resemblance consists essentially in the capability the created soul has of receiving, by Divine grace, God's uncreated Word: ye I, even the very Word that is God, receiving It as It is in Itself. This was all uttered by God, when He divinely spoke His infinite Word in the God-head. Now, one might enquire: Since the Father has thus spoken His Word, what does Jesus speak in the soul? Dear children, I answer you by recalling what I have already said of the manner of His communication: He speaks and reveals His own self, and that includes all that the Father has spoken in the Divine act of uttering the Word, all being now addressed to the soul according to its capacity to receive it.
First, He reveals the Father's supreme majesty in the soul, in His sovereign and immeasurable power. And when the soul feels and perceives this almighty power in God's Son — feels itself made a partaker of that power in all virtue and in perfect purification, so that neither joy nor sorrow nor any other created force can unsettle its peace; then in that Divine power it rests, strong against all adversaries, great or little.
In addition to this, the Lord reveals Himself in the soul in infinite wisdom — in the very Divine wisdom that He is Himself, that in which the Father knows Himself with His almighty paternity; and, again, the Word that is wisdom itself and is one essence with the Father. When this wisdom is united to the soul, all doubting and all straying away is stopped, and all spiritual darkness vanishes, and the soul is placed in the clear light that is God's self. It is now as the prophet said: "In Thy light we shall see light." (Ps. 35.10) That is to say: Lord, all light is seen in the soul in the light that Thou art. Thus God is known in the soul by the light that God Himself is. And thus is Wisdom known by the light of Wisdom Itself; and with it the soul knows itself and all things else that it knows. Thus, again, by this wisdom is known God's fatherhood in majesty, His essential unchangeableness, and His Divine and indivisible unity.
Thirdly, Jesus reveals Himself within the soul with infinite love, with sweetness and abundance of love welling forth from the Holy Ghost, and overflowing into the heart, all docile and receptive of its rich streams. Yes, it is by means of the Love that Jesus is that He reveals Himself to the soul and unites it to Himself. It is this sweetness that causes the soul to flow into itself, and then to overflow beyond all creatures—melted by Divine grace, given power to return again into God its first fountain and origin. Then the outward man bows down obedient to the inward man — obedient unto death; then are both the inward and outward faculties at peace with each other in God's service.
May God grant us this happy state; may He expel and destroy all hindrances in us in both soul and body, so that we may be made one with Him in time and in eternity. Amen.
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