We all want to be satisfied in life.  That's what happiness is, really, the achievement of satisfaction, of spiritual contentment, of a sense of fulfillment that doesn't wear out.  Everything we do is directed towards that end.  It's like we have a homing device built into our hearts, and it keeps drawing us towards fulfillment and satisfaction.  We keep seeking new activities, accomplishments, relationships, adventures - all because we feel this interior drive for fulfillment, meaning, and happiness.

This is a good thing.  God made us that way.  He put the homing device in our hearts, because he wants us to find that satisfaction and fulfillment, that happiness.

However, there is a problem.  Ever since sin entered into the world, we have had a tendency to look for this fulfillment in the wrong places.  God designed the human heart to find its lasting fulfillment in a deep, personal, ongoing friendship with him - in what the Catechism calls "communion with God" (#45).

This is why the first three commandments, as we read in today's First Reading, have to do with our relationship with God - that's the most important thing.  But our fallen human nature tends to look for it in other places: career success, money, pleasure, power, popularity…  But that is wrong.  Those things are fine in themselves, and they have their place in the human story.  But they cannot substitute God!  Only God can satisfy our deepest longing.

That is why Jesus gets so worked up in today's Gospel passage.  The Temple was set aside as a place where people could go to pray, to encounter God and develop their friendship with him.  But all of these merchants and money changers had made it into a mall, a place of buying and selling things!  The place that should have helped people find God had gradually become full of obstacles to finding God.  Jesus passionately wants us to find God, because he wants us to find true satisfaction.

No one is completely satisfied in life, completely fulfilled; we are all searching for that happiness that we were made for.  St Augustine expressed this beautifully at the beginning of his autobiography when he wrote:  "Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord."

One of America's most renowned philosophers and writers, Henry David Thoreau, expressed this same idea less optimistically.  He wrote, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation."  The human heart is hungry, but in this fallen world people don't always remember what it's hungry for.

Jesus came to put hope into that desperation, to give direction to that restlessness.  Only friendship with him can lead us to the satisfaction we long for, not because it ends our search - that won't happen until heaven - but because it puts us on the sure path, the dependable, hope-filled path of the saints.  That friendship, however, has a price - we have to let Jesus clear away the false gods that are cluttering our hearts.

Pope Paul VI summed this up beautifully: "He is the center of history and of the world; he is the one who knows us and who loves us; he is the companion and friend of our life."

Jesus wants our friendship, because the only place we can find the fulfillment and satisfaction we yearn for is in communion with God.  And our part in building this friendship consists of two things:  first, seeking to know and love Christ through prayer; and second, seeking to follow Christ by fulfilling God's will for our lives.

This phrase, "God's will," can easily be misunderstood or used as an excuse to justify questionable personal agendas, whether violent, political, or self-indulgent.  But as Catholics, we are protected from that kind of error; a Catholic knows exactly where to go to find God's will.

First, we go to Christ's example and teaching - both in the New Testament, and in the Old, as we saw for example in today's First Reading.  That enables us to know God's will easily and surely 85% of the time.  Christ wants us to avoid sins of anger, arrogance, judgementalism, gossip, lust, greed, laziness, dishonesty…  These behaviors damage our friendship with him and cause destruction to those around us.  Christ also wants us to develop our God-given talents and opportunities, and to use them to build up society: "love your neighbor as yourself," as he put it.  That's God's will for us, and 85% of the time it's perfectly clear - if we just think about it.

For the other 15%, when we are doubtful or uncertain, we need some more assistance.  And God has given it to us in his Church.  He has promised to guide us through the teachings of the Church, which sheds the light of Christ's truth on tough issues, both social and personal - as it has done faithfully for the last 2000 years.  To know, love, and follow Christ, then, also involves knowing, loving, and following Christ's Church.

Jesus wants the temple of our hearts to be filled with his friendship, not with false idols and empty promises.  When he comes to us in this Mass, let's let him clean out whatever he wants to, so that that friendship can really flourish.