"I am the Lord, your God.…" God; Who is He? Well, God is God. He has no equal. There is nothing with which we can compare Him. There is just one of Him - only one. So He defines Himself, you might say. His own words were, "I am who am." In other words, He cannot be fully described or defined.

God is all powerful. He is all-knowing. He is all-holy. He is completely one. He is pure. He is Eternal. He is perfectly balanced and possesses perfect harmony. There is no contradiction in God. He is complete love. He is all-just. He is so far above us, so transcendent, that we on our own could not begin to imagine such a difference between us and Him. Without his help, we would be unable to bridge the gap between us.

How, then, do we even begin to bridge that gap between God and humanity? How do we even begin to pray to a God so different from us that we actually know more about what He is not than what He is? How do we begin to acknowledge Him in our daily lives, and how do we worship Him?

These have been questions with which humanity has been grappling and trying to answer since the beginning of time. 

How do we worship, communicate with, relate to a God whom we intuitively know exists? What does this mean and what does it require of us?

Over and over again in the Old Testament we hear how people became confused and misled, how they broke the First Commandment and began worshipping false gods. You have to believe they didn't do this usually with malice. No, they were looking for some way of making sense of God, some way of touching and seeing Him and worshipping Him that made sense. So they turned to created things, not divine, and called them gods, hoping these gods would bring them peace, security and happiness. 

My friends, the same thing is happening today. People are turning to false gods because they are searching for some way to reaching out to God.

What do you place on the altar of your life?
What do you believe will bring you happiness?
Is it health, beauty, money,business, job, a particular political party, your home or your car? 

Our Gospel today tells us how the people of old made money from religious practices and turned the "Father's House" in which God's presence was to be found into a place of idolatry, the worship of money and business. 

Then Jesus makes that stunning declaration (which would get him killed later) that He was the temple of God, that he was God, that the Body of Christ would be raised up and would be the place where real worship of God would happen, the God whom we seek to know and understand and love.

Yes, Jesus Christ is the bridge between God and humanity because he is both human and divine in his natures while remaining one divine person united with the Father and the Holy Spirit. 

It is through Jesus that we are brought into union with God; it is through his Body that we find union with the God we cannot see or comprehend or know because Jesus is the mediator between God and Man. 

Jesus is the revelation of God to humankind. He has shown us what it means to be truly human. He has shown us the face of God himself. 

Have you noticed how in the official prayers of the Church we always end by saying, "Through Jesus Christ, your Son...?" We always go through Jesus to the Father. 

But it isn't just in our prayers that we experience the power of going through Jesus who intercedes for us at the right hand of the Father. We experience it also by placing Jesus at the center of our entire lives — living a Christ-centered life.

Seeing Jesus in other people, treating them like we would treat Jesus himself, this too is worship of God. Recognizing Jesus in our daily lives is the road to salvation because Jesus alone bridges the divide between God and man. When others become the face of Jesus, then we begin to recognize and serve God.

And remember, the Church is His Body. It is through the Catholic Church that God's true presence enters the world; through the Church that salvation enters the world for the Church is the Body of Christ. We are members of that Body, each of us, and in each other, gathered here for the Eucharist, we can see the face of Jesus the one mediator between God and humanity.

My friends, we must give our professional lives, our work lives, our family lives a Christ-centered meaning. We must put on a new way of thinking this Lent. We must put on the mind of Jesus. 

Jesus, the mediator between God and Man.
Jesus the divine person — one with the Father and the Holy Spirit - yet both human and divine in his natures.

Without him, we lose our way. Without his Body the Church, we become blind to the truth and his presence among us. We must never forget that! Without his Body we become blind to the truth and we no longer see him for who he is.

Reach out to God this Lent! Go through Jesus to do so! Find him in the Church!