Homily for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica

[For those keeping track, this is my third homily, given on Sunday, November 9, 2008 at Holy Rosary Parish in Cleveland's Little Italy neighborhood.]

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome. St. John Lateran is the see, or official cathedral Church of the Bishop of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI. Today we know this as the Lateran Basilica and it remains the first Church among all Churches. It is still the cathedral for the Pope, the official seat of his authority, and thus a place of central importance to us, highly symbolic as a place of God’s presence with His faithful people.

A.) This gives us the opportunity to imagine back in time a little about why this celebration is so significant. Recall that Christianity emerged as an offshoot of Jewish religion which itself had fallen under the civil authority of the Roman Empire. Judaism was an accepted religion in the Roman Empire, but for the first 300 years of her existence, Christianity enjoyed little official recognition. I’m sure you can recall learning about the early Church martyrs, Christians persecuted because of their faith in God against the pagan gods and because of their rejection of Roman attempts to force them to worship Caesar as a god. They faced a life and death struggle. For so many years, their worship needed to be done in relative secret at the houses of other Christians. The world was not ready yet to welcome them and offered little in the way of support.

Yet our Christian ancestors remained faithful to God’s call in their life to love, honor, and worship Him with lives of mercy and forgiveness towards all. They made a place in their lives for our Lord. And despite the persecution and discrimination they faced, the early Christian community remained grounded in their faith, striving to be faithful citizens in service to their villages and to the empire that cared so little for them.

B.) Imagine then, the amazing joy of these early Christians when, after centuries of struggle, their faith was recognized and even rewarded. In 311 AD, Emperor Constantine, fast at work uniting the Eastern and Western Roman Empire, declared Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire. To provide the Church a suitable place from which its ministry on Earth could continue and grow, Constantine gave the Church the land of an old fortress and on the site constructed a new basilica for the Church and a palace for the Pope. Imagine that shift from struggle to acceptance and the joy of receiving a new home where they could live in peace.

C.) One of the most human things we can do in our time here on earth is offer God a home in our hearts; a place of rest and a place from which to share his peace with the world. St. Paul calls our attention to this when he asks, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” This feast then, offers us the chance to reflect upon our own dignity as human beings and the home we are building for God; the home we offer from within that takes its fullest shape when we gather as one people in his name.

B’.) The challenge for us is how to go about preparing this home for God, both in our hearts and in the world around us. Living in awareness of our dignity as human persons requires a continual effort to get to know Christ. This means that we need to place ourselves in His presence with unwavering consistency and commit ourselves to prayer and faithful living. Our lives move continually from encounter with Christ in prayer (especially here in our Eucharistic liturgy) to service of others and back to encounter. By this we continue in the line of our Early Christian ancestors who, motivated by the joy of their own encounter with Christ, sought to transform the world by sharing that same mercy and love with others. And borrowing once again from their example, the joys we hope to experience in life, come when we are citizens of our faith and faithful citizens in the world by allowing Christ to act through us. Thus, faithful citizenship is one means we must employ as we seek to prepare a home for God within our hearts and in the world around us.

A’.) Faithful citizenship is not something we do one day every four years. Faithful citizenship requires our honest and on-going participation in the good efforts of our community. But we must also stay alert and attentive to threats against the dignity of the human person as they also threaten the bonds of community. Today we recognize threats to the dignity of the human person in the evils of abortion, the destruction of human embryos in medical research, assisted suicide, the death penalty, war, racism, torture, usury, and the list goes on. It is not an option for Catholics to openly support any of these evils. Nor is it an option to remain silent in the face of them. Our lives must give witness to the truth both in our words and through consistent, prayerful and peaceful action in opposition to them.

While we can and should support the good efforts of our country’s leaders as they strive to promote the common good of our nation, we, as Catholics, also have a duty to ensure that our voice is heard and our positions considered on all issues that run contrary to the Gospel of life. We must lead with love, sharing the same love that God offered to all of us through the gift and sacrifice of his Son who died for our sins and for our salvation.

Conclusion:

One of the most human things we can do in our time here on earth is offer God a home in our hearts from which He can go forth in Spirit to renew and transform the earth. We are the temple of God and should live in awareness of the Spirit of God dwelling within us. And even when we face threats to that dignity, from our own personal sins or the sins of the world around us, we must remain faithful witnesses to the love of God offered to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Our faithful and patient endurance of the trials of life through which we share in the sufferings of the cross, will be rewarded by an ever increasing awareness of God’s presence dwelling within; a presence from which we can act with confidence to love and serve the needs of others.