The Holy Prophet Haggai.
Nativity Fast.
2 Timothy 3:16-4:4; Luke 19:45-48.
Read Luke 19:45-48
The prophet Haggai lived during the building of the Second Temple in Jerusalem after the Babylonian Exile. He prophesized, saying: “Thus says the Lord Almighty: ‘Carefully consider your ways! Go up to the mountain and cut wood and build the house, and I will take pleasure in it and be glorified” (Hag. 1:7). Later, the Lord would say through Haggai: “The glory of this latter house shall be greater than the former . . . and in this place I will give peace” (Hag. 2:9). Haggai exhorted the Jewish people to finish rebuilding the Temple, calling them to reverence and to glorify God.
More than five hundred years after Haggai’s prophesies, Jesus would eventually drive out sellers from the Temple. Jesus said: “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer;’ but you have made it a den of robbers” (Lk. 19:46; see Is. 56:7 and Jer. 7:11). The sellers and moneychangers were treating the Temple as a hub for corrupt commerce and committed injustices, and this went against glorifying God. In Jesus’ act of cleansing the Temple, one can see how much Jesus in fact honored the Temple. Yet, when Jesus was on trial before Caiaphas, two witnesses came forward accusing Jesus of blasphemy and said, “This fellow said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days’” (Mt. 26:61). When Jesus spoke of destroying the Temple and rebuilding it in three days, He was in fact speaking about His upcoming death and Resurrection. The priests at the Temple continually offered sacrifices to God which could never take away sins, “But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God . . . For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified (Heb. 10:11-12, 14). Because of Jesus’ death and Resurrection, it is no longer necessary to make sacrifices to God at the Temple.
St. Paul tells us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (see 1 Cor. 6:19). Just as the prophet Haggai as well as Jesus desired that the Temple in Jerusalem be treated with reverence for the glory of God, so too must we respect our own bodies for the glory of God.