Feast of the Dedication of St John Lateran Basilica

John 2:13-22

Today the Church celebrates the feast of the dedication of the church of Saint John Lateran. It is perhaps a church that most of us don’t know, and we might wonder why it is that we are celebrating such a dedication. The church of Saint John Lateran is actually the mother church of all churches in the world. That is because it is the cathedral church of the diocese of Rome. Saint Peter’s Basilica is not the Pope’s cathedral, but rather the church of Saint John Lateran is the Pope’s cathedral. Yet there never was a saint by the name of Saint John Lateran – it is actually named after Saint John the Evangelist – but it has that name because the land was donated by the Lateran family. And so it is the place where everything else flows from, as far as where the authority of the Church resides.

This Mother of all Churches was dedicated by the Pope Saint Alexander in 324. The Lateran Church was partially ruined by fires, enemy invasions and earthquakes but it was always rebuilt with great zeal by the Sovereign Pontiffs. In 1726, after one such restoration, Pope Benedict XIII consecrated it anew and assigned the commemoration of that event to the present day. The church was afterwards enlarged and beautified by Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII.

Why do we celebrate this feast of the dedication?

If we are joining the celebration of its dedication today, thereby, we are in communion with the Pope. Celebrating the dedication of the Pope’s cathedral today shows our unity with the Pope and our love and respect for him. Not only that, but it shows that we are united with each other in the Church as the Body of Christ.

Celebrating the dedication of Saint John Lateran reminds us also of the importance of the church building as sacred space set apart for personal and collective encounter with God. This is what we hear in the gospel with the human Christ filled with emotion on seeing the church transformed into a market place. What offended Jesus was that they were interfering with the real purpose for coming to the temple. The encounter in the Temple is not with persons who seek God but dealers of the sacred: The Temple is no longer the place of encounter with God, but a market where the presence of money is in force. Worship has become the pretext to gain more. He denounces that the Temple has been deprived of its historical function: to be the sign of the dwelling of God in the midst of his people.

We know that God is everywhere. Yet when the people of God erect a building and dedicate it totally to God’s service, God’s glory comes to dwell in that building in such a way that the building can now be called the house of God. Solomon recalls this mystery in his prayer of dedication of the temple in Jerusalem: “Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27). So, while we celebrate God’s special indwelling in a temple, we must remind ourselves that God’s presence is not confined in the temple. God is still everywhere. But God manifests His glory in a special way in some persons, places, and things. A temple or church is one such place.

Today in the world, many Christians have lost the sense of the church as a sacred place, to the point that the behavior of many worshippers in our churches today borders on irreverence. Many Christians have altogether abandoned practices that are meant to remind us that we are in God’s presence when we enter the church. These include such little things as dressing in a decent manner for church, signing oneself with holy water on entering the church, genuflecting or bowing to the altar or the tabernacle before taking one’s seat or before leaving the church, not chatting in church, and lowering one’s voice when one has cause to talk in church.

The loss of the sense of the sacred in church buildings and church worship might be one reason why people are no longer keen on church attendance. If they come to church thinking it to be another social gathering, no wonder they find it so boring. But when we realize that the church is a holy place, a place of encounter with God, with one another and with oneself, then we bring a certain disposition of mind and body to church service which helps make worship an uplifting rather than boring experience. Today’s celebration of the dedication of St John Lateran invites us to renew our faith in the church as a house of prayer and to cultivate habits and practices that make it easy for God to encounter us whenever we go to church.