Homily for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica

The Church of St John Lateran whose feast falls today was the location of the residence of the Popes for around a thousand years. The Church was dedicated to Our Lord and later to St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist; it is here that both St Philip Neri and St John Henry Newman were ordained deacon. The first reading represents the spiritual fruitfulness of the Temple in Jerusalem; the waters that give life indicate the renewal brought by prayer and sacrifice in the Holy Place. This speaks to us Christians of Baptism, where water is the sign and instrument of spiritual renewal in the New Covenant. Jesus, on the other hand, in the Gospel, shows zeal for the integrity of the Temple as a place exclusively for worship. But in speaking of himself as the true Temple of God on earth he refers to that one perfect sacrifice which he will offer of the altar of the cross. This is the same sacrifice that we offer in our churches – the sacrifice of the Mass, which renews the grace of Our Baptism. St Paul in the second reading takes a different angle – we ourselves are the building of God, that is the church herself is the dwelling place of God. The true Church is not the buildings but believers united in the Mystical Body of Christ. If St John Lateran’s dedication feast expresses the universal nature of our Catholic Faith, this is a universality which stretches beyond earth into heaven – the Church Militant, the Church expectant in Purgatory, the Church Triumphant in Heaven. By the grace of Baptism and by the power of the Sacrifice of the Mass may we all come to share in the fulness of Christ’s Redemption. Amen.