Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica - November 9, 2003

            If you are familiar with the writings of the prophets in the Old Testament, you will recognize in this reading from the prophet Ezekiel that these strange and holy characters of the past seemed to see beyond or behind what the human eye is capable of.  “There I saw,” says Ezekiel in his book of prophecy, “the glory of the God of Israel coming from the east.  I heard a sound like the roaring of many waters, and the earth shone with his glory.  I fell prone as the glory of the Lord entered the temple...”  These prophets were allowed insight into the normally somewhat hidden glory of God.  And the sight was always overwhelming; as they were allowed to peer behind the fabric of time and matter, they saw a glory that caused them to tremble with awe and even some fear. 

            Christians from the earliest days took up this idea and sought to express it in the building of their churches.  They wanted the very buildings where the people of God gathered, where the Mass was said, and where the Holy Eucharist reserved -- they wanted those buildings to reflect such an unearthly and holy glory that is God’s.  We see this in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, the Pope; it is this church’s dedication that we celebrate on today’s feast.  First built and dedicated in 324 AD, it stands as a monument to the Christian endeavor to reflect the glory of God among His people.

            And there is the other part of this hidden reality, which we try to reflect in Christian art and architecture:  the glory of the Temple of God’s people, what we are being built into, a glorious temple where God is worshipped.  “Are you not aware,” asks the Apostle Paul in the second reading, “that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”  The temple in Jerusalem, the temple that is the Church, the temple that is the Body of Christ, the temple that is the human heart:  the place, the meeting place, where God is worshipped.

            “You are God’s building….”  “[Y]ou are the temple of God….”  These are strange words of St. Paul, if we take them seriously, if we reflect on what a temple really is, especially in the light of the temple in Jerusalem.  One thing we see clearly from today’s Gospel:  the temple is most certainly not a marketplace; it is not the venue for the transactions of ordinary life, the buying and selling, the trafficking in the things simply pertaining to one’s life and comfort in the world.  St. Paul is teaching us something that is dramatically illustrated by the anger and action of Jesus:  here in the temple of God, we move above and beyond nature and worldly concerns; we are, ultimately, made for far more than changing money, selling things and buying them.  As our Lord proclaimed when He drove out the moneychangers and merchants – words recorded by St. Luke – that this temple is a house of prayer, not a den of robbers.  A house of prayer.  A place, the place of encounter with God, of communication with the Almighty. 

            And the place of sacrifice.  Sacrifice.  That’s why our Lord so mysteriously, all of sudden, looks into the eyes of those opposing Him and says, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”  I am going to reveal to you, Jesus is saying, what all the temple sacrifices have always been pointing to, paving the way for.  Sacrifice has always been the means of the people of God, the occasion, of their drawing near to God; now, most amazingly, your God has come to you.  He is standing before your very eyes in the meeting place of God and humanity. 

            In the temple.  He, in fact, as He Himself says, is the temple – about to be destroyed in the crucifixion – the place where God meets with His people, for Jesus Christ is both, fully, God and man.  His offering of Himself in sacrifice is our means of communion with God, something we celebrate at every holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  For here, at Mass, much like the Jewish people did for so many centuries, we gather – leaving the marketplace outside – to pray and worship, to encounter God, to hear Him speak to us in His Word, to offer Him our profession of faith, to offer ourselves to this God who accepts our offering of bread and wine and turns them into the means of giving Himself so fully to us, to be present with us as truly as He was present to those standing around Him in the temple when He taught them the ways of God.  Behold, your God has come to you, and in the Eucharist never leaves you.  He comes to inhabit the praise and worship of His people, to give Himself to us after the manner of His offering up of Himself on the cross of Calvary.  In sacrifice.  Our response?  St. Paul, in his letter to the Christians at Rome, put it so well:  “I appeal to you therefore, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (12:1,2). 

            Do not be conformed to this world…. That is, don’t turn the house of God into a marketplace, nor the human heart, meant for the worship of God, into a den of thieves.  Or perhaps in some ways even worse:  to turn the marketplace into a temple, to worship  and adore at the shopping mall or the stock exchange.  Rather, let us Christians once again build temples after the manner of St. John Lateran, monuments to our faith that would remind us of what the prophets saw behind the beautiful liturgy of the temple in Jerusalem, behind the magnificent stone and mortar that signified so much else.  They saw God’s glory present there in the midst of the people.  The Catholic Church reflects that glory in the building and adornment of churches.  And that beauty in which we worship reminds us of the glory to which we are all called:  to live in God’s presence now, to offer ourselves to Him in praise, worship and surrender, and to know the great joy of that in all the ages to come.