Fr Agustinus Sutiono O.Carm

We celebrate the Dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran because it is the head and mother church of all churches in the world. There is an inscription in Latin on the façade of the basilica that reads, “the mother and mistress of all churches of Rome and the world.” Every bishop has a cathedral and the Pope’s cathedral is the Basilica of St. John Lateran, not the Basilica of St. Peter. There was a story behind this. The emperor Constantine had been given the palace in Rome that belonged to the Lateranus family, and after his conversion to Christianity he gave it to the Pope. The Lateran Palace was then adapted to become a church and was dedicated on November 9, AD 324, and the Pope then lived in there for the next 1000 years and the basilica was his cathedral. It was first called the Basilica of the Savior but later was also dedicated to St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, and so it acquired the name Basilica of St. John Lateran.

Celebrating the dedication of the Pope’s cathedral today shows our unity with the Pope and our love and respect for him. Not only that, but it shows that we are united with each other in the Church. St. Paul described this unity in his first letter to the Corinthians as the Body of Christ. For as with the human body which is a unity although it has many parts, so it is with Christ. We were baptized into one body in a single Spirit, Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as free men, and we were all given the same Spirit. Now Christ’s body is ourselves, each of us with a part to play in the whole. We are the temple of God itself. We are a dwelling place of God which also function as a meeting place of God and his people, just like the idea of the tent of meeting in the Old Testament. This dignity bears a great significance for the presence of the Church as well ours.

From the book of Ezekiel, we gained a vision of a river flowing from the Temple in Jerusalem and bringing life everywhere it went. We could see it as a vision of the Church receiving life-giving grace from Jesus. In the Letter to the Ephesians, we read, that we are built upon the foundations of the apostles and prophets, and Christ Jesus himself is the cornerstone. Every structure knit together in him grows into a holy temple in the Lord; and we too in him are being built up into a dwelling-place of God in the Spirit. We are God’s building whose foundation is Jesus Christ. These passages from Scripture remind us to make Jesus the foundation stone and corner stone of our lives because there is a life-giving river flowing from him to fill us with his grace. As the wáter that flowing from the Temple itself symbolizes the wisdom of God, we are made aware that everyone of us, after having a meeting with God in Temple, carries the task of that living wáter, whose presence brings life, growth, strength, freshness and healing, not the otherwise. Moreover, everyone of us is a meeting place of God, the Divinity, and our humanity.

As we celebrate today the dedication of the “the mother and mistress of all churches of Rome and the world” we can pray also for those who have got lost going through life that they may find the Church as a true mother and that Jesus may become the foundation stone and corner stone of their lives. May we live out our being with dignity as the dweling place of God´s Spirits, every good spirits and  may our presence among others also help others see God’s presence, love and wisdom. Amen.