I don’t believe the deacon’s analogy holds water, equating what he obviously dislikes about the old times with that which Christ referred to in the Temple area as “money changers.”
Re-reading the scriptures, we see:
The Cleansing of the Temple.*
Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all those engaged in selling and buying there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.
And he said to them, “It is written:
‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’*
but you are making it a den of thieves.”
The blind and the lame approached him in the temple area, and he cured them.
When the chief priests and the scribes saw the wondrous things he was doing, and the children crying out in the temple area, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant
and said to him, “Do you hear what they are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; and have you never read the text, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nurslings you have brought forth praise’?”
And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany, and there he spent the night."
Jesus was concerned and angry with the area surrounding the Temple, His house of prayer, being used as nothing more than a moneymaking scheme, “a den of thieves.”
One might see an entirely different analogy here. Outside of The Church, The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, are people purveying all manner of psychological tricks, new age “religions,” drugs to quiet us, entertainment to seduce us, bickering, divisive arguments and pure folly.
In effect, purveyors of false belief systems pandering with the stuff of people’s souls. The thieves are just outside the temple area, barring those innocent souls who simply want to walk forward into Church with hearts as pure as the doves, hearts that belong only to God. Priceless, each soul, walking forward into the Church without any need to buy into divisive arguments or man made divisions. That is what I see outside the Temple. But walk inside and see that which He has prepared for us! The Real Presence of Christ.
Once we step inside the Church, we let all that encumbers us fall away. Historically, from the moment Christ handed the keys of the kingdom to Saint Peter, we were all set on sacred ground. “The Gates of Hell,” Christ told us, “shall not prevail against” Her. Neither shall divisions of taste, preferences or analogies that confuse and divide.
Those brothers and sisters among us who have their preferences as to which Rite speaks best to their souls, all among us must unite in the love God has given us through the divine continuity of His Real Presence.
Whether we like the old ways or the new, The Church has always been God’s house of prayer. The Church, as the Bride of Christ, may well be undergoing transformations, but She is to be spoken of reverently. She has always been Christ’s Bride.
Decent people received Christ at those long-ago Communion altars just as we do now. People may have gone to confession with a different understanding psychologically, but are we so much better today, when fewer people actually go to confession?
To equate past liturgical forms or growing pains with the terms “moneychangers,” seems not to be opening windows, but trampling on sacred ground.
Christ spoke of the infants and nurslings having great wisdom. Before we are even in our mother’s womb, our spirits are pure and chaste, and joyfully stretching our souls towards perfect unity with our Heavenly Father who created all.
“I was glad when he said unto me ‘Let us go into the House of the Lord.’”
“The joy of the Lord is my strength.” Let His joy rule among us, to give us strength to face whatever changes come, and to respect the ways of those who have gone before us.
Let those who prefer tradition rejoice with those who welcome change. Let justice and mercy kiss one another, and the old and the new face the altar with pure hearts!
There is beauty wheresoever Christ is present. Our Holy Church, in Her beliefs in the Real Presence, Her Sacraments, Her People, all are part of God’s house of prayer.
