Today we celebrate the dedication of what the Christianity
calls “the mother and head of all the churches in Rome and around the world.” After
Christianity was legalized in 313, St. John Lateran was the domicile of the
Pope for a 1000 years--the place from which he taught and guided the Church for
a millennia. November 9 is the date that John Lateran was dedicated in the year
324.
Now, there is no Saint named Saint John Lateran, of course. The
title Lateran, is not the last name of a Saint, but a geographical
location. The whole area where the
basilica was built was owned by a Roman Senator, Flavius Lateranus. And so, the full name of St. John Lateran
Basilica is the Archbasilica of the Most Holy Savior and Saints John the
Baptist and the Evangelist in the Lateran. Now you know why we abbreviate the
name.
Today, we recall the importance of the Pope in Christianity,
for St. John Lateran is the Cathedral of Rome, the place of the Pope’s
Cathedra, his seat of authority. But we
also mark the importance of dedicating Church buildings to God, of having
sacred buildings, sacred places where the Church comes together to worship.
Priests get phone calls fairly often now from young couples
wanting to have their weddings celebrated on a beach. I got a call recently from a couple wanting
their wedding at a farm. We’ve lost the
sense of the sacred, and the idea of sacred space. And for many young Catholics who never step
foot in a church, then I guess a beach or a farm would be more sacred than a
church building.
And it’s not entirely their fault. After Vatican II there
seems to have been a rash of ugly, uninspiring churches built, churches which don’t
look like churches. Even though Vatican
II called for “noble beauty” in Church architecture, the prevailing modernist
impulse is to de-sacralize everything,
including church architecture. Modernists claim we should treat nothing as
holy because they say everything is holy.
We shouldn’t have to go to Church because God is everywhere. But this
idea is totally foreign to Catholicism. From
day one, Christians have gathered together in sacred spaces for the celebration
of the Sacraments.
And as we can, we are to make them noble and beautiful. A church
should be beautiful, and should look like a church from the outside, that it
may inspire and draw people from the world encounter God who transcends the
ugliness of the world. And a church should be beautiful, and look like a church
on the inside, that it may inspire and express the honor we owe to God in
everything we do.
So we dedicate our church buildings to God, we adorn them
with gold vessels, ornate vestments, and beautiful art, we set them apart as
sanctuaries, as places where we encounter the holy, the divine. For, if
we don’t dedicate some things to God, we will end up not dedicating anything to
God. We dedicate church buildings, set
them aside, adorn them with beauty, that we may be dedicated, consecrated, and
adorned with virtue.
If you’ve never had the chance to visit Rome and the
timeless basilicas there, I will be leading a pilgrimage there this May, please
consider joining me, as we make pilgrimage to the holy places. If you have access to the internet, you can
also take a virtue tour of St. John Lateran and some of the holy places.
In the Gospel today, we hear of Jesus driving out the ugliness of
sin and evil from God’s temple. May the devout celebration of this feast drive
out the ugliness and sin which sometimes makes their way into our lives. May
the celebration of the dedication of the mother Church reminds us of the beauty
and harmony with which we are to live as Catholics, in intimate communion with
Jesus, coming together in holy places to listen to the Word of God and to be
nourished by the Body and Blood of Christ, that we may be built up into a
pleasing temple to God for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
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