Building a temple: Homily for Thursday, September 25, 2025

Whether it is a major edifice like the Jewish Temple, or how it is that we build our own lives, it matters what we use for materials. Give some thought today about how you will let God work in your life as a Temple of the Holy Spirit. Readings for Today.

Building a temple

Well, I suppose on one level we could call this the novice gospel because we reference John and Elijah. And we could say maybe it’s a Saint Dominic’s gospel because the gospel comes from Luke.

When I was teaching, the last school I was at we worked and focused very hard as a school on problem-based learning. And what that is, it’s a way of learning where the assignments, the tasks, the things that go on in class are geared to real-world things. Everything is about doing something that connects to the real world. The claim is that kids were more engaged because they saw the reason for what they were doing.

Now as I listened to this style of education at the beginning of its presentation to us, I thought, “Well, theology is practical, but what can we actually do that’s a real-world project in theology?” But I have to say that when I took this approach, kids put in a ton more energy in the assignments than they had before.

And there was one assignment in particular that I asked for kids in a class called Campus Ministry, although I really used it as a class in discipleship. And the whole point of the class was to answer one practical question. How do or will I find meaning and purpose in my life?

And every part of the class had some connection to helping students ultimately answer that question for themselves. I stole an idea from one of the history teachers, and because it had religious overtones, and said, “Boys,” because this was an all-boys school, “we’re building a cathedral brick by brick.” And each element was a brick. Each thing that we did to help them answer the question was a brick in this cathedral that they were going to build.

Now I mention that because in some ways the Gospels are about temples. In the first reading, it’s the obvious temple, the temple that had been destroyed in the exile, and then had been left to really be left to rot and not be successful. And the time has come for the people to decide whether or not they’re going to follow God.

The exile to Babylon produced many different kinds of results. Some practiced their faith, and we saw in that period of time the beginning of some kind of synagogue worship because they weren’t near Jerusalem and the temple. Others really came to like the Babylonian culture, and they kind of decided they were going to stay there, and they stopped living their faith. Some went back when the opportunity presented itself, but didn’t pay immediate attention to the temple.

This is the message that Haggai is called to deliver. What temples do we build? Because that’s really the message here. They got about their own life, and they were distracted by all kinds of things that come with living, maybe even some very good things. But they lost their foundation.

In a way, the gospel is about temples too, but of a different sort. Herod was not a nice guy. Pilate wasn’t a nice guy either, and yet they became friends when they encountered Jesus, although I’m not convinced it was for any good reason. Herod is confused. We learn in another part of the Gospels that he was attracted to the words of John, but he couldn’t accept them. Remember, it was John the Baptist that was telling him, “Your marriage is not valid. You married your brother’s sister, but he’s still married. She’s still married.”

But Herod just couldn’t take the step to accept that John spoke the truth. He can’t take the fact that he’s perplexed and do more with it, to actually seek to discover for himself who Jesus is. The temple he wants to build has little or nothing to do with God. We are constantly faced with similar choices. St. Paul refers to us as the temple of the Holy Spirit, and we either can work on building the temple of our lives in a way where the Holy Spirit’s actions become visible not only to us but to others, or we can build something else.

Today, listen to the words of Haggai and ask yourself, “Are you gathering lumber for the temple? Are you getting ready to rebuild what has been destroyed? Are you opening yourself to the master builder who is Jesus Christ?”

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