{"id":872,"date":"2015-11-09T09:22:37","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T14:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/?p=872"},"modified":"2022-11-09T10:46:21","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T15:46:21","slug":"dedication-of-st-john-lateran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/2015\/11\/09\/dedication-of-st-john-lateran\/","title":{"rendered":"Dedication of St. John Lateran"},"content":{"rendered":"

To appreciate the importance of today’s liturgy we have to imagine ourselves at Mass 1800 years ago. We’re in Rome, not our local parish, and not a church, but just another house in the neighborhood.\u00a0There are no parishes anywhere. Anywhere in the world. Just Christians gathering in houses for Mass.\u00a0We\u2019re not celebrating by daylight, but by candlelight. The windows are covered so that no one can see what we\u2019re doing, and the door is being guarded to make sure no one catches us by surprise.\u00a0Roman soldiers smash down the door, and they drag everyone outside at sword point and take you to one of those old statues you see in museums, but it\u2019s all brand new and shiny, with an altar in front of it, and incense burning.\u00a0And they point to that big stone statue and point their swords at you and say, \u201cworship that, that\u2019s a god, or we\u2019ll hurt you and take away everything you own. And then don\u2019t every celebrate a Mass again. It\u2019s your choice.\u201d You know that\u2019s not right, you know that statue is not God, and you refuse, so they take you away in chains with your family.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not just a story; \u00a0it happened to Christians all over the world for almost two hundred years. And we\u2019re celebrating today when it came to an end. Today we\u2019re celebrating the dedication of the first parish in the whole world: St. John Lateran in Rome, which is the parish of the Holy Father, the Bishop of Rome.\u00a0It was dedicated in 324 as the first place where Christians could publicly worship in the West without having to be afraid of losing their property, their family, and their lives, after almost two hundred years of having to get together and worship in secret for fear of getting arrested.\u00a0That parish became the first parish of the diocese of Rome, and if you go to the big church that\u2019s built there today, you see written on its columns that it is \u201cthe mother and head of all the churches of Rome and the world,\u201d which is why we\u2019re celebrating its dedication throughout the world today.<\/p>\n

Ezekiel in the First Reading today is having a vision from God symbolizing\u00a0the importance of that church.\u00a0Ezekiel was in exile with the Israelites after they had been conquered and their Temple destroyed.\u00a0In his vision, God shows him a new Temple to come, from which will flow a water that makes all sorts of good things grow and thrive, so that those good things can refresh and heal.\u00a0That water is the grace of God that has flowed from Christ, to the apostles and their disciples, and to the Church for all of mankind for thousands of years, all over the world. We can\u2019t see grace with our eyes, but we can imagine how pure and clean it is when we imagine that water flowing from the Temple, and how it always has big beautiful fruit trees near it, with medicinal leaves, wherever it flows. That water, like grace, can wipe away anything. It can quench any thirst. It can heal any wound. It can water any plant. But it takes faith to drink it, which is why we learn more about our faith every time we prepare to receive a sacrament, because every sacrament gives us another drink of grace.<\/p>\n

Jesus in the Gospel today get\u2019s mad at people in the Temple who are doing things that make his Father\u2019s house more like a mall than a place to worship God.\u00a0The Jews had to pay Temple taxes with money minted by the Temple \u2013 no foreign money was allowed. So the money changers were there to give people money minted by the Temple in exchange for foreign money.\u00a0The\u00a0Jews came to sacrifice animals to God, so they sold animals there as well. And all that business was turning the Temple into one big mall. And that hurt God, because people forgot about him. The people in charge of the Temple were angry with Jesus because he\u00a0did what they didn\u2019t do. So they asked him for a sign, like the prophets used to do, to prove that what he was doing was God\u2019s will.<\/p>\n

So, like a prophet, Jesus promised them a sign, a big sign, but one you could only understand if you believed in him: the Resurrection.\u00a0They didn\u2019t understand it until after the Resurrection, and the disciples didn\u2019t understand it either.\u00a0Jesus said the sign was \u201cDestroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.\u201d They were thinking of that big building, but he was talking about himself. Destroying the temple was his death, and raising it up was his Resurrection. So if Christ was the first temple, if we want to be like Christ, we have to be temples too.\u00a0So to show that we are temples of the Holy Spirit, we have to drive out everything in our heart that would make it hard for people to see that we\u2019re Christians, to see that we\u2019re temples of the Holy Spirit: we don\u2019t sell out who we are or what we believe for money, we don\u2019t hide who we are for fear of what others will say, and we always put God first, and don\u2019t worship anyone or anything else.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s thank God today for keeping us alive and healthy through his grace, and pray that the water of grace may flow everywhere in the world.\u00a0Let\u2019s pray for the Church throughout the world, especially in those places were Christians still have to gather and worship in secret for fear of death or arrest.\u00a0Finally, let\u2019s promise to show everyone that we are temples of the Holy Spirit by living holy lives.<\/p>\n

Readings:\u00a0Ezekiel 47:1\u20132, 8\u20139, 12;\u00a0Psalm 46:2\u20133, 5\u20136, 8\u20139;\u00a0John 2:13\u201322.<\/em><\/p>\n

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To appreciate the importance of today’s liturgy we have to imagine ourselves at Mass 1800 years ago. We’re in Rome, not our local parish, and not a church, but just another house in the neighborhood.\u00a0There are no parishes anywhere. Anywhere in the world. Just Christians gathering in houses for Mass.\u00a0We\u2019re not celebrating by daylight, but … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[115],"class_list":["post-872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dedication-of-saint-john-lateran"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65qtw-e4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2944,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions\/2944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}