Here is today’s Gospel, from St Luke: ‘And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers.” And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people sought to destroy him; but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people hung upon his words’.

‘My house shall be a house of prayer’. This applies also to the ‘house’ of our heart, the sacred place where Christ lives within us. St Macarius said: ‘The heart itself is but a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and there are also lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. But there too is God, the angels, the life and the kingdom, the light and the apostles, the heavenly cities and the treasuries of grace—all things are there’.

As we enter this ‘inner kingdom’, let us pray that only Christ lives there, and that we remain in constant communion with Him. May God bless you this day.