Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekiel 47:1-12) reveals to us the riches and the blessings that God makes available to us in his Temple. 

There is an overabundance of life-giving water flowing from this mysterious Temple and spilling over the whole land. That overabundance must make us wonder about God’s intention. 

As we reflect on this uplifting vision of water flowing from this mysterious Temple, we realize that, even as far back as at Ezekiel’s time, God had in mind his version of a Temple so unique that the one in Jerusalem was to be a very inadequate, temporary version.  

The water of grace made available to us through the Sacraments: Baptism, Eucharist, and Reconciliation, can flow only from God’s version of a Temple.  

But where is God’s version of a Temple to be found?  

The answer comes to us from many sources in the New Testament.   

St. Paul tells us openly that, in Christ, we are God’s version of a Temple as well as its builders so that its expansion planned by the Father may include as many grace-filled people as possible. (1 Corinthians 3:9-17) 

We are people from all walks of life, with differentskills and talents, selfless attitudes and laudable inclinations, good tastes and praiseworthy aspirations. Thus, with goodwill, we are all capable of allowing God’s grace to transform us into docile, living stones and expert bricklayers, to enlarge the new Temple. 

Unfortunately, in honesty, we know that all these good attributes God gave us are buried underneath the rubbles of self-interest, bruised egos, fears, and occasional or prolonged aloofness. 

That must be the reason why Jesus ends in a dramatic way (John 2:13-22) the religious operations of the old temple to inform us that now there is a new Temple, the Temple of his Body of which we are active members and living stones. 

Hence, simply put, now any church should be a sacred place in which we are filled with God’s grace so that we can serve and love God horizontally anywhere, anyhow. 

At the same time though, we cannot force God to limit his presence to sites that fit our demands or meet our expectations.  God and his grace are and remain totally free. 

We cannot decide that God can be found only in the Blessed Sacrament, for example, or only in people whom we like, we approve of, we choose to associate with. 

Due to the “horizontality” of God’s new Temple, if we do not meet him in hospitals, in nursing homes, in centers for the disabled, in prisons, on sidewalks, in slums, in mission lands, we will not find him in our parish church for sure.  We would come here to feed and perpetuate a pious delusion. 

I stumbled upon the reason why it is so while meditating on the famous parable of the good Samaritan.  

The priest and the Levite justified their refusal to help God present in the unfortunate traveler left for dead by robbers, because they had to remain undefiled to offer lawful sacrifices and prayers in the old temple.   

What a delusion! What a common delusion! Could God whose plead went unheeded on the road to Jericho, accept their sacrifices and listen to their prayers in the temple of Jerusalem made of lifeless stones? 

On the other hand, if we truly find him here, especially as we feed eagerly at the table of his Word and of his flesh in Holy Communion, at the end of Mass he will take us straight to wherever his physical needs are most urgent: to our family, to our neighborhood, to our office, to our workplace, and in many other places (at least vicariously through other people of good will). 

And if we do not find and serve him here on earth, and especially in the most unlikely places and most improbable people, we will not meet him in Heaven either.   

Because heaven is everywhere God is and, today, we learned that Heaven could not be any closer than we are to ourselves, to our neighbor, and to other people’s hearts.