Dedication of St. John Lateran

November 9, Tuesday

Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

 

 

You, the Temple of God, Are Sacred

Christians build churches to worship God. But churches have no meaning unless they point towards the Church, the body of Christ animated by his Spirit. God is present in the first place where his people are, with their faith and hope and love. We are the Church, and by the grace of God we make the Church; we are its living building stones. When we come to church we express that we are God’s living people who build our lives on Christ.

 

First Reading: Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12

Now he brought me back to the entrance to the Temple. I saw water pouring out from under the Temple porch to the east (the Temple faced east). The water poured from the south side of the Temple, south of the altar. He then took me out through the north gate and led me around the outside to the gate complex on the east. The water was gushing from under the south front of the Temple.

He told me, “This water flows east, descends to the Arabah and then into the sea, the sea of stagnant waters. When it empties into those waters, the sea will become fresh. Wherever the river flows, life will flourish—great schools of fish—because the river is turning the salt sea into fresh water. Where the river flows, life abounds. Fishermen will stand shoulder to shoulder along the shore from Engedi all the way north to Eneglaim, casting their nets. The sea will teem with fish of all kinds, like the fish of the Great Mediterranean.

“But the river itself, on both banks, will grow fruit trees of all kinds. Their leaves won’t wither, the fruit won’t fail. Every month they’ll bear fresh fruit because the river from the Sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.”

 

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 3:9c-11,16-17

You are God’s house. Using the gift God gave me as a good architect, I designed blueprints; Apollos is putting up the walls. Let each carpenter who comes on the job take care to build on the foundation! Remember, there is only one foundation, the one already laid: Jesus Christ.

You realize, don’t you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? No one will get by with vandalizing God’s temple, you can be sure of that. God’s temple is sacred—and you, remember, are the temple.

 

Gospel: John 2:13-22

When the Passover Feast, celebrated each spring by the Jews, was about to take place, Jesus traveled up to Jerusalem. He found the Temple teeming with people selling cattle and sheep and doves. The loan sharks were also there in full strength.

Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, “Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a shopping mall!” That’s when his disciples remembered the Scripture, “Zeal for your house consumes me.”

But the Jews were upset. They asked, “What credentials can you present to justify this?” Jesus answered, “Tear down this Temple and in three days I’ll put it back together.”

They were indignant: “It took forty-six years to build this Temple, and you’re going to rebuild it in three days?” But Jesus was talking about his body as the Temple. Later, after he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this. They then put two and two together and believed both what was written in Scripture and what Jesus had said.

 

Prayer
God our Father,
you have called us through your Son
to be a community of faith, love and service
built on the only firm foundation,
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Fill us with his Spirit,
that we may be your Church in word and deed,
making no demands, seeking no privileges,
not trying to dominate and control.
Help us to bring joy to all,
to love without excluding anyone,
and to serve without demanding gratitude.
May we thus be the living house of God
filled with the presence of your Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Reflection:

The Glory of God is the life of man

The Basilica of St. John Lateran is the cathedral of the Pope as Bishop of Rome. It was built by Constantine and was for centuries the residence of the Popes. This basilica is a symbol of the unity of all Christian communities with Rome. It is called “mother of all the Churches,” and for this reason, this feast is a reminder that we are all united by the same faith and the one Church, built on and handed down by the Apostles. In recent times the Pope presides on the Holy Thursday Eucharist and the Washing of the Feet in St. John Lateran.
The temple in Jerusalem was the central place of the religious life of Israel. It was considered the privileged space of God’s presence on earth and, therefore, the proper place for worship and prayer. The episode in which Jesus expels the vendors and moneychangers from the temple is presented in all the four Gospels. In John’s Gospel, the story becomes a text of self-revelation. It is the first time that Jesus manifests, his divine identity when speaking of the Temple as “my Father’s house.” On the other hand, he takes the image of the sanctuary as his own body. It is another way of indicating that he is the new temple, where the real presence of God is.
We celebrate dedication of the Lateran Basilica, mainly because it was the first public building, the first temple where Christians found themselves free, after centuries of persecution. At the site’s entrance, there is an inscription that reads: “Holy Church of Lateran, mother and head of all churches of the city and of the world,” meaning that all temples, where Christians gather throughout the land, had its beginning there.
Today’s celebration leads us to think of our own diocese and parish community. Our local churches are united to the “head and mother” Cathedral and this is a feast of the unity of the Church. Today we especially pray for all those who form the life of our dioceses: from the most humble and hidden members to our bishops that from the symbolic place of the cathedrals are the visible foundation of unity.
We also pray that our parish communities and our dioceses, with the testimony and actions of all its members, fulfil the mission of the Church to share the joy of the Gospel in the midst of men and women of our time and place.
If the temple is a place of encounter with God, God Himself shows us the great place to find him: in the lives of the poor, and the needy around us. This is the temple to be respected; no one can defile this temple with contempt and exploitation. The glory of God is man’s life and the life of man is the ability to see God.

 

Video available on Youtube: The Glory of God is the life of man