THE CHURCH: BUILDING OR PEOPLE?

Homily for Nov. 9^th, 2017: Dedication of the Lateran Basilica: 1 Cor. 3:9c-11, 16-17; John 2:13-20

            As a devout Jew, Jesus worshiped regularly in the Jerusalem temple. There he was brought as an infant to be dedicated to God. There, at age twelve, he was found by his anxious parents after a frantic three-day search. There, as we heard in today’s gospel reading, he overturned the tables of the money-changers, rebuking people for turning God’s house into a marketplace.

            That temple did not long survive Jesus. Not forty years after his death and resurrection Jerusalem was plundered by the Romans, who pulled down the temple Jesus had known, and in which Peter and the other first Christians continued to worship even after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. Now, Paul writes in today’s second reading, we are God’s temple: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”

            Today Catholics all over the world celebrate the dedication of a Christian temple: the Church of St. John Lateran in Rome. Though not well known, St. John Lateran and not St. Peter’s Basilica is the Pope’s Cathedral as Bishop of Rome. It is customary in every diocese or local church throughout the world to celebrate the dedication of the cathedral, the bishop’s church. We celebrate this feast in St. Louis on October twelfth. Because the Pope is the chief shepherd of the whole Church, Catholics all over the world celebrate the dedication of his cathedral each year on the ninth of November. Only when that date falls on a Sunday, however, do most Catholics become aware of the observance.

            The preface to the eucharistic prayer for this feast helps us to appreciate the significance of today’s celebration: “You give us grace upon grace to build the temple of your Spirit, creating its beauty from the holiness of our lives.” Even as we celebrate the dedication of a building, therefore, the Church’s public prayer reminds us that the most important temple is the one built not of stones, but of people. 

            A parish where I once served used to attract many visitors. They would often remark: “Father, you have a beautiful church.” To which I always replied: “Thank you. And we think the building is nice too.” The Church is people before it is a building. “The temple of God, which you are,” Paul writes in our second reading, “is holy.” “Holy” means ‘removed from ordinary use, set apart for God.’ It is in this sense that a chalice is holy. It is not an ordinary cup. It is used only for the Lord’s Precious Blood. The buildings in which we worship are holy: they are not auditoriums or theaters. They are set apart for worship.

            We too are people set apart. When did that happen, you ask? In baptism! The Catechism says: “Baptism not only purifies from all sins, but also makes the neophyte [the newly baptized person] ‘a new creature,’ an adopted son of God, who has become a ‘partaker of the divine nature,’ member of Christ and co-heir with him, and a temple of the Holy Spirit.” [No. 1265]  The whole of the Christian life, therefore, is not a striving after high ideals which constantly elude us. It is living up to what, through baptism, we already are: temples, dwelling places of God’s Holy Spirit.

            Today, therefore, we celebrate not merely the dedication of a building: the Pope’s cathedral in Rome. We celebrate no less our own dedication as people set apart for God. What that means in daily life St. Paul tells us in stirring words in his letter to the Philippians: “Show yourselves guileless and above reproach, faultless children of God in a warped and crooked generation, in which you shine like stars in a dark world and proffer the world of life” (2:15) There is no call higher than that, no life more worth living.