Today, Jesus' gesture is prophetic. As the old prophets used to do, He makes a symbolic action, full of future implications. By casting out of the temple the merchants who were selling their offerings to their victims and evoking that “my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Is 56:7), Jesus was announcing the new status He was about to commence, where the sacrifice of animals was out of the question. St. John will define this new cultural relationship as “God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth” (Jn 4:24). The figure must give way to reality. St. Thomas Aquinas poetically said: “Et antiquum documentum / novo cedat ritui” (“Lo! over ancient forms departing / newer rites of grace prevail”).

The New Rites are Jesus' Word. This is why Saint Luke linked the scene of the purification of the temple with Jesus preaching there every day. The new worship is centered in the prayer and in the hearing of God's Word. But, in fact, the central core of the Christian institution is the living person of the very Jesus, with His own flesh offered and His own blood shed at the Cross and given to us in the Eucharist. Saint Thomas also beautifully remarks it: “Recumbens cum fratribus (...) se dat suis minibus” (“Seated with His chosen band (...) gives Himself with His own hand”).

In the New Testament Jesus inaugurates, there is no need for veal or lamb merchants. In the same way as “all the people were hanging on his words” (Lk 19:48), we do not have to go to the temple to make sacrifices in order to receive Jesus, the true lamb sacrificed once for all when he offered himself for us (cf. Heb 7:27), and to join our life to His.