From the Barren Temple to the Living Stream
Julián Carrón - The passage from Ezekiel that we have just heard in the first reading is one of the most symbolically rich passages in the Old Testament. The prophet received this vision during the exile in Babylon in the sixth century BC, a period of profound upheaval for the Jewish people, who had lost their land and, above all, the Temple of Jerusalem, destroyed by the Babylonians.
During the vision, the prophet is led to the entrance of the Temple and sees a stream flowing from “under the threshold,” in an inaccessible place, testifying to its divine origin. The water begins as an almost imperceptible trickle, but it does not need external tributaries to swell. The river does not only flow through the arid land of the Arabah, but also towards the Dead Sea—the place par excellence of sterility and death, because its high salinity makes it devoid of life.
The identification of the precise location, familiar to those who know Palestine, helps readers understand the transformative power of the river's water. No dryness or sterility can resist the regenerative power of the river's waters: “They flow into the sea and make its waters fresh. Every living creature that moves wherever the river flows will live: there will be an abundance of fish, because where those waters flow, they make the land fresh, and wherever the river flows, everything will come back to life.”
The waters from the Temple, reaching the Dead Sea, transform it, making it fresh and populated with fish. This is a sign of God's ability to bring life even to the most desperate, barren, or “dead” situations of human existence and the world. Along the banks of the river, “every kind of fruit tree will grow, whose leaves will not wither,” because the life given by God is eternal, abundant, and brings healing.
Arriving in Jerusalem for Passover, Jesus finds the Court of the Gentiles in the Temple transformed into a market for sacrificial animals and a money changers' office. Even the most sacred place can be desecrated and filled with dryness. Instead of fulfilling its function of communicating the life that God has given to His people, the Temple has become a market. Jesus cannot contain his indignation: “Do not make my Father's house a market!”
The Jews cannot understand why Jesus took the liberty of driving them out of the temple: “He drove everyone out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen; he threw the money changers' coins on the ground and overturned their tables.” For the disciples, the meaning of this gesture is clear, and they immediately think: “Zeal for your house consumes me” (Psalm 69). The Jews, on the other hand, ask him for a sign to justify his messianic authority: “What sign can you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answers them with a cryptic phrase: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews' response is eloquent: “This temple was built in forty-six years, and you will raise it up in three days?” The Jews do not understand that no other temple, once destroyed and rebuilt, could avoid being desecrated again.
The issue was different: a response was needed that was equal to the challenge—a temple that could not be desecrated and that could fulfill its role as a place of communication of salvation. In fact, as we read in the Gospel: “He was speaking of the temple of his body.” Jesus thus announces the fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy: Jesus himself is the new temple that he will rebuild in three days, through his death and resurrection, and from which eternal life will flow for all peoples. The true temple is no longer that of Jerusalem, but Jesus himself.
With him, God has inaugurated a new era. Since then, as St. Paul writes in the second reading: “No one can lay a foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” We who are baptized have become part of this new temple: “Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?” In fact, he says, the temple of God “is you.” The life that flows from Christ through the Church is destined to reach and heal every place and every heart, even the most arid and desolate. Beginning with Baptism, the Church is the continuation of this flow of grace.
The Basilica of St. John Lateran, as the cathedral of Rome and “mother of all churches,” symbolizes the source from which the flow of grace expands and spreads, capable of reviving every aridity and restoring life to every decay. What hope for each of us, whatever our aridity may be! This flow of life at work in history challenges all our skepticism, showing that something new can happen where we fail! Each of us is given the opportunity to welcome the newness that reaches us through the transformed lives of those who have welcomed it, so that we can make our dryness blossom.
Unrevised notes by the author.
Dedication of the Lateran Basilica - Feast Day - Notes from the homily of Fr. Julián Carrón - November 9, 2025
(First Reading: Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12; Psalm 45 (46); Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 3:9c-11, 16-17; Gospel: John 2:13-22)
