Dedication of the Lateran Basilica – Readings

Commentary Ezekiel 47:1-2,8-9,12; 1 Corinthians 3:9-11,16-17; John 2:13-22

Today’s reading from John’s Gospel is the account of Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple. The synoptics report this event just before the Passion, but John puts it much earlier, just after the story of the wedding feast at Cana.

We are told Jesus had gone up to Jerusalem from Galilee because the Passover feast was near. When he entered the Temple area he found people selling oxen, sheep and doves to be offered by pilgrims as sacrifices. There were also money changers because Roman currency could not be used in the Temple and had to be changed for Jewish shekels. Jesus was not at all happy about these activities.

He made a small whip of cords and began driving out those selling animals and overturned the tables of the money-changers, saying:

Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!

Of course, what the sellers were doing was not against any law; in fact, it was a necessary service. The problem was that commerce like this should have been done outside the Temple area, just as we would not be happy to see trinkets and such being sold inside the church building after Mass. Hawkers tend to get as close to the action as they can and that is what was happening here—but it was still inappropriate.

However, some Jews challenged Jesus, asking: “What sign can you show us authorising you to do such things?” What Jews were these? Were they priests or officials of the Temple who were getting a ‘cut’ on the hawkers’ profits and turning a blind eye to their selling inside the Temple precincts?

Jesus gave them a strange answer:

Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

The Jews took him literally saying:

This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?

This was the mighty Temple of Herod, which even after 46 years was not yet quite finished.

But as John comments, Jesus was talking about the Temple of his Body. And it was only after the Resurrection that the disciples came to understand the meaning of Jesus’ words. They are words we need to remember today. We are celebrating the dedication of a church building, the Lateran Basilica, but what is much more important are the people who use that building. It is they who give it its significance, and not the other way round.

In the New Covenant, there is no temple building. The temple is now the Christian community, which is the Risen Body of Christ. Jesus is in effect saying: “Whoever sees you, sees Me.” So it is important in today’s celebration that we recall who we are, and how we are to be seen to be the Temple of Christ’s Body for the world.

There is a choice of First Readings today.* One is from the prophet Ezekiel and is part of a beautiful image of fresh water flowing out from the Temple in Jerusalem and bringing new life and fertility to wherever it flows. This fresh and clean water flows east into the Dead Sea and makes it fresh again:

Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish once these waters reach there. It will become fresh, and everything will live where the river goes…On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail…

It is an image of the Temple of Jerusalem as a source of life for all. And in today’s celebration, it points to the life that comes to the world through the communities which gather together in a church like St John Lateran and all our cathedrals and parish churches. Again, it is not the building which is the source of life, but the community which gathers together there.

In the alternate First Reading from the First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul speaks very strongly of the Christian community as the true Temple of God:

For we are God’s coworkers, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.

Paul sees himself as a builder, but it is not a building of bricks and mortar he is erecting, but a building of people. And he is only initiating the building work; others will take over from him and continue it. This building of people can have only one foundation, and that is Jesus Christ.

And Paul concludes in words that leave no room for doubt:

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

So, in celebrating today’s feast, we are being called on to focus more on the kind of temple that we are than on the building, however important and beautiful it may be. In the beginning, there were no churches and people met in each other’s homes for the Eucharist. Church buildings became necessary because of growing numbers. In fact, if St John Lateran, St Peter’s and all the churches in the world were to collapse into ruins, the real Temple of God would continue—in us:

For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them. (Matt 18:20)

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*When this feast falls on a Sunday, the passage from 1 Corinthians is read as the second reading.

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Dedication of the Lateran Basilica

Most people probably think that St Peter’s Basilica is the pope’s main church in Rome. But actually, it is the Church of St John Lateran which is the cathedral and hence the pope’s church as bishop of the Diocese of Rome. On the façade of the basilica there is an inscription in Latin which reads:

We tend to forget that the pope is primarily a bishop, a ‘first among equals’, and that this church has a special and symbolic importance for the whole Church.

The first church building on this site was built in the 4th century when the Emperor Constantine gave land he had received from the wealthy Lateran family. That church, and others which replaced it, suffered over the centuries from fire, earthquakes and war, but it remained the church where popes were consecrated until they returned from exile in Avignon, in the south of France. When the Avignon papacy formally ended and the pope could return to Rome, the Lateran Palace and the basilica were in a serious state of disrepair. The popes took up residency at the Basilica of St Mary in Trastevere, and later at the Basilica of St Mary Major. Eventually, the Palace of the Vatican was constructed, and it has been the pope’s residence into the present time.

The current Lateran basilica was erected in 1646. It ranks first among the four major basilicas in Rome (the others are St Peter’s, St Mary Major’s and St Paul’s Outside the Walls) as the Ecumenical Mother Church. On top of its facade are 15 large statues representing Christ, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist and 12 Doctors of the Church. Underneath its high altar are the remains of a small wooden table on which tradition claims St Peter celebrated the Eucharist.

St John Baptist and St John the Evangelist are regarded as co-patrons of the cathedral, the chief patron being Christ the Saviour himself, as the inscription at the entrance of the basilica indicates, and as is the tradition in the patriarchal cathedrals. The basilica remains dedicated to the Saviour, and its titular feast is the Transfiguration. Its full title then is:

Celebrating the dedication of the pope’s cathedral today is a way of expressing the unity of the whole Church with the pope, the Bishop of Rome. And the union of each local church with this church is an expression of the unity of all churches both with Rome and with each other.

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