Sunday the 9th of November 2025 - The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica

Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12/ Ps 46(45)/ 1 Corinthians 3:9c-11, 16-17/ John 2:13-22

Today we celebrate a building, or rather the dedication of a building, the Lateran Basilica in Rome. This might seem to be a strange thing to celebrate when our feast days are normally dedicated to people. If you have searched for a home and visited a new build or a premises that has been freshly decorated with all the furniture and fittings removed you might have noticed how cold, dead, and uninviting these buildings might be. There is no atmosphere in them, they are simply an empty and stark building. On the other hand, if the premises for sale is still lived in with the heating on, the furniture in place and the rooms adorned with pictures, ornaments, and the personal effects of those still living there the feeling is very different. One is simply a building while the other is a home. It is the essence of those who live in the place that gives it the warmth and feeling of a home, a living and breathing building out of which flows the spirit of those who live there.

Our church buildings are sacred spaces that capture the spirit of the one who lives within them. The tabernacle housing the person of Jesus, indicated by the perpetually burning sanctuary lamp, is from where the atmosphere of the building emanates. The bricks and mortar of the church building is simply a shelter in which the Blessed Sacrament can be held, the sacrifice of the Mass can be celebrated, and we can gather as a community to give praise and honour to God together. The building is there only to provide shelter, it is not the building that is important but the gathered people of God, a building made up of living stones founded on the solid foundation stone that is Jesus.

So why are we celebrating a building today? It is not the beauty of the basilica that we are celebrating but what it stands for. The Lateran Basilica was established around the year 324. The Pope is firstly the Bishop of Rome. His cathedral church is not Saint Peter’s Basilica but the Lateran Basilica. It is this church that is the mother church of the City of Rome and of the World. It stands as a sign of unity with the chair of Saint Peter, occupied by the Pope of the day who presides over the universal Church. It is not the building we are celebrating but the unity of the universal Catholic church stemming from Jesus, the foundation stone, the position of Pope, established by Jesus upon Peter the rock, and all of us who make up the living stones built on these solid foundations. Without the solid foundation of Jesus and the rock of Saint Peter we would be tottering walls prone to subsidence and collapse. We need to be built on the sure footings placed for us by Jesus. If we abandon these solid foundations and build our own self-serving churches, we risk collapse and ruin.

The passage from the letter to the Corinthians emphasises Jesus as the foundation of the Church. Not a building but a community of followers and believers. It is built upon by Peter and the apostles and all baptised Christians thereafter. Together we are all the bricks and stones of a living temple, a house of God, in which the Holy Spirit resides and is readily available to the world. We must be careful that our building up of the Church on earth is maintained on the sure foundation of Jesus and not a different and seemingly more convenient stone. The message Paul is passing is that we, as the gathered community of believers are the living temple where the Spirit of God dwells. This makes us holy, a sacred community requiring us to live in a manner that respects the divine presence of God within it. There is a warning for anyone who defiles or seeks to damage or destroy the Church through false teaching, sowing seeds of division, immorality or anything that damages the holiness and unity of the community.

The Old Testament image of the water flowing from the temple given in the first reading can, from the context of the New Testament and our understanding today, give us a powerful image of how God gives his life giving grace to the world through his church on earth, The temple is the community of believers, the Church, the water flowing from it is the powerful grace of the Holy Spirit bringing life to a world in a spiritual desert. The trees with leaves for healing and fruit for food represent the abundant gift of life, the spiritual nourishment flowing from God’s grace through the new Temple, which is the body of Christ, not a building but a person.

The flowing waters of God’s grace can heal and renew the most desolate areas of life. The most effective way this occurs is through the sacraments providing spiritual food and healing to individuals who believe. The first reading points towards God’s plan to address the fall of humanity by bringing new life to a transformed world, a kingdom where our sinfulness is replaced by God’s love and grace.

The Gospel passage recounts a dramatic event in which Jesus drove out the merchants and money changers from the temple. Jesus did not display an out-of-control anger and fury but his actions served to highlight his love for the temple which at that time was a sacred building being desecrated by commercialism and the exploitation of the poor seeking to make their offerings. Although Jesus physically evicted the corrupt traders from the temple building his actions served as a prophesy of the new temple to come, the temple that was to be his own resurrected body. This new temple, the one founded on Jesus and made up of all of us as living stones still needs to be cleansed, cleansed of the commercialism that corrupts worship, the damage done to our spiritual lives by the secular actions of the world around us. We are the living temple and it is this temple that needs to be cleansed of sin through the constant renewal of our hearts and souls.

Let us today ensure that we are the living stones of the Church founded firmly on the foundation stone of Jesus and the rock of Saint Peter so that the living waters of the Holy Spirit will flow out into the world to produce the healing and food so needed today.

God Bless Brendan.