Today the Church commemorates the dedication, in the year 324, of the Lateran Basilica of St. John the Baptist in Rome. At first, it might seem odd that the Church celebrates a feast day for a building – we usually do that for people: the saints – but on the façade of this ancient church there is an inscription that helps give us a sense of why this building is so important that we celebrate its dedication each year.
In Latin, the inscription reads: “Omnium ecclesiarum urbis et orbis caput et mater,” which means “of all the churches in the city and the world, head and mother.”
You see, the Basilica of St. John Lateran is Rome’s cathedral church and therefore it is the seat of the Pope who is the bishop of Rome. So we can rightly say that St. John Lateran is indeed “the head and mother” of all the dioceses, cathedrals, and local churches spread throughout the world.
When we celebrate this feast we celebrate the universality and unity of the Church throughout the world. But the prayers and Scripture readings for this feast invite us to go still deeper, and to reflect upon (1) Jesus Christ as the new Temple, (2) His Body the Church, and (3) the temples of our own bodies.
Christ the New Temple
In today’s Gospel passage Jesus is “consumed with zeal” for His Father’s house. He sees the Temple of Jerusalem being turned into a marketplace, and in righteous anger, He chases the money-changers and vendors from the sacred precincts. St. John records that when the Pharisees ask Jesus to justify Himself, He says: “destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
The Pharisees completely misunderstand His meaning, but when Jesus is crucified, and blood and water flow out from His pierced side, and after three days in the tomb He rises to new life, His disciples do understand.
They understand that Jesus is declaring Himself to be the new Temple, the fulfillment and replacement of the Temple in Jerusalem. No longer does God meet humanity in the house that Solomon built. God and humanity now meet in the very person of Jesus Christ, and Ezekiel’s prophecy from our first reading is fulfilled: the water he saw flowing from the side of the temple, now flows from the side of Christ’s body and it gives the new life of Baptism to all creation.
The Church is His Body
Our faith assures us that Jesus continues live in His body the Church. Time and time again we read in St. Paul’s letters that we who have been baptized are members of His body: each with a particular mission to carry out, but dependant upon the other members, and held together by Christ our Head. We baptized are “living stones” built together into the Body of Christ, the new temple within which God and humanity are restored to friendship.
Our church buildings are therefore more than merely a meeting place where Christians gather and celebrate the Liturgy. Churches are physical, tactile manifestations of the body of Christ, to which we all belong.
That is why so many of the very best churches throughout the Catholic world, like the Lateran Basilica and our own parish church, were built in the shape of the Cross upon which Jesus’ body hung. Here in stone and glass we have a physical representation of the Church, and Jesus Himself is the head.
That is also why the Church has always deemed it worth the cost of providing worthy, dignified, indeed beautiful decorations for its church buildings.
We know that holiness is beautiful . . . that’s why all the world was captivated by Mother Teresa, and throughout history the lives of the saints have been found to be so compelling. Their holiness is beautiful.
But just as holiness is beautiful, so too beauty is holy! Beauty, like goodness and truth, can only be the fruit of union with God. And so, if the church building is to be a true representation of Christ’s Body the Church, then the church building must be beautiful enough to our senses that it makes a life of holiness understandable and compelling. As we long for beauty in our lives, we should long too for holiness.
The Temple of our Bodies: The Dignity of the Human Person
And so we come to the final point of today’s feast. St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians reminds us that we “are God’s building,” we “are the temple of God,” and that “if anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person.”
This is the high dignity of the human person. We are not merely bodies; we are a unity of body and soul, and a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.
So many things in today’s world, and in our own daily lives, threaten to “destroy God’s temple.” The violence of war and poverty, the scourge of pornography, the misuse of science and medicine all strip humanity of its dignity and treat the human person as a mere object or commodity.
And in our own daily lives, in our own hearts and minds, we come face to face with the ugliness of sin. We so often fail to think and act toward others in a way that respects their dignity and reverences the Spirit that dwells within them.
Like he did with the money-changers in the Temple, Jesus longs to drive these agents of death from our lives. He wants to rebuild us as a temple of His Spirit, and to replace the ugliness of sin with the beauty of holiness.
Brothers and sisters, it remains only for us to yield to these designs of the Divine Architect.
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