Without entering into the merits of Joe Zammit’s interpretation of the verse from the Bible: “The just man falls seven times a day”, his letter (‘A parrot –like saying in homilies’, The Sunday Times of Malta, January 4) reminded me of a passage from the Gospel which, in my opinion, is commonly given a wrong interpretation by many.

I am referring to the passage where Jesus overturned the tables of those people who were selling all sorts of things outside the temple of Jerusalem.

A lot of people refer to this episode to say that even Jesus lost his temper on that occasion. In his ‘Illustrissimi’ letters, the future Pope John Paul I, Albino Luciani, when still Patriarch of Venice, referred to this incident and wrote that this was a deliberate action by Jesus to give a deserved lesson to those people who were profaning His Father’s temple.

This was no lack of self-control or loss of temper on the part of Jesus. Indeed, Jesus, the Son of God, cannot be subject to the least imperfection because even His human nature was not subject to any inordinate human tendency.

As St Paul says: “Jesus was like us in everything except in sin.”