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"san-giovanni-in-laterano"
Lateran Basilica baptistry
November 9, 2014
A study on accidental death occurrences shows that
(a) 20% of all fatal accidents occur in automobiles,
(b) 17% of all accidents occur in the home,
(c) 14% of all accidents occur to pedestrians on streets or
sidewalks,
(d) 16% of all accidents involve travelling by air, rail, or
water,
(e) 32% of all deaths occur in hospitals,
and (f) only .001% of all deaths
occur in church during worship services.
According to this study, therefore, the safest place for you
to be at any given point in time is not in your car, or in the home or in the
hospital but in church!
Today we celebrate the dedication of the basilica of St John
Lateran in Rome.
Why celebrate the dedication of a church in far away Rome,
you may ask.
It is to remind us of the importance of the church building
as sacred space set apart for personal and collective encounter with God.
Historically, the basilica of St John Lateran is the oldest
church of Rome and the highest ranking church in the world, followed by St
Peter’s basilica in the Vatican. As such it is the mother of all churches.
When we celebrate its dedication to God, therefore, we
celebrate the mystery of God’s special presence and indwelling in buildings set
apart for divine worship, including our own parish church.
We know that God is everywhere.
Yet when the people of God erect a building and dedicate it
totally to God’s service, God’s glory comes to dwell in that building in such a
way that the building can now be called the house of God.
Solomon recalls this mystery in his prayer of dedication of
the temple in Jerusalem: “Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot
contain you, much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27).
So, while we celebrate God’s special indwelling in a temple,
we must remind ourselves that God’s presence is not confined in the temple.
God is still
everywhere.
But God manifests His glory in a special way in some
persons, places, and things. A temple or church is one such place.
In earlier days, a temple, church or shrine was revered so
much as to suggest that God dwelt exclusively in such places.
People went to church, participated in service, received
communion and went home without knowing who was sitting beside them in church.
Spirituality was very individualistic and the man or woman
sitting next to you was rather seen as a distraction in one’s intimate
communion with God.
Worshippers forgot that we are brothers and sisters, and
that we come to church to worship God as family.
To discourage this self-centered religiosity, Vatican
Council II introduced some changes in worship such as the priest facing the
people at Mass and worshipers exchanging the sign of peace.
But we swung from one extreme to the other, and today many
Christians have lost the sense of the church as a sacred place, to the point
that the comportment of many worshipers in our churches today borders on
irreverence.
Many Christians have altogether abandoned traditional
practices that were meant to remind us that we are in God’s presence when we
enter the church.
These include such little things as signing oneself with
holy water on entering the church, genuflecting or bowing to the altar before
taking one’s seat or before leaving the church, and lowering one’s voice when
one has cause to talk in church.
When we realize that the church is a holy place, a place of
encounter with God, with one another and with oneself, then we bring a certain
disposition of mind and body to church service which helps make worship an
uplifting rather than boring experience.
Today’s celebration of the dedication of St John Lateran
invites us to renew our faith in the church as a house of prayer and to
cultivate habits and practices that make it easy for God to encounter us
whenever we go to church.
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