Interesting liturgical feast days keep on falling on Sundays for us — and this week, we get to celebrate the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome.

The Lateran Basilica, sometimes just referred to as St. John Lateran, is one of the 4 major basilicas of Rome and is actually the oldest public church in the Eternal City, being founded and dedicated wayyyy back in the year 324.

Fun fact — there is no person by the name of St. John Lateran. 

“Lateran” refers to a Roman family who once had a palace on the same plot of land where the present day church stands —  and “St John” actually refers to two saints by that name — St. John the Baptist AND St. John the Evangelist.

To make things even more fascinating about this ancient church, The Lateran Basilica is actually the Pope’s Cathedral… not St Peter’s Basilica, which is where Pope Leo lives — it is St. John Lateran where the actual “seat” — the “cathedra” of the Diocese of Rome can be found. 

That makes this church really the CENTER of all Christendom… THE most important church building in the entire world.

But despite all these very interesting and very fascinating trivia facts — you might still be wondering why we would have a feast day dedicated to a physical building …even one as important as St. John Lateran?

Isn’t the Church more than architecture? More than brick and mortar? More than old pretty buildings?

Well of course it is!

As St. Paul says so beautifully in our second reading: “Brothers and sisters: You are God’s building.”  … “YOU are the temple of God” … “the Spirit of God dwells in YOU!”

YOU are the Church, WE are the Church… together! This is a deep mystical, interior, spiritual truth…

Regardless of what kind of building we find ourselves in… WE ARE THE CHURCH — whether we celebrate the mass in a gorgeous cathedral… or in someone’s dingy house… in a hospital room… or on top of a mountain… on the back of a jeep in the middle of a war zone… or down in the catacombs, hiding from persecution.

So in a sense, it doesn’t matter what sort of physical building we have — Because at its heart, the Church is the living, breathing Body of Christ…. The Community of Baptized Believers — One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic — boldly advancing the Kingdom of Heaven, inviting people to receive the gift of salvation one soul at a time. Like that image of the Heavenly Temple in our first reading from Ezekiel — the Church, the PEOPLE of God — brings living giving waters wherever we go… salty water turns fresh, and the desert becomes a lush forest!

But having said all that, we also need to understand that any true, living body has to have a physical presence…it has to have a tangible, concrete location, a visible appearance. 

And the same is true for Jesus’ Church.

One of my favorite descriptions of the Church is that it is the Incarnation of Jesus… extended through space and time. 

The Incarnation is a tactile, physical reality. The Word really did become flesh and dwell among us! So it makes perfect sense why Jesus’ Church would also be intensely physical… with all the smells and bells, symbols, and art, vestments, marble, gold, silver and wood. The Seven Sacraments that Jesus instituted each use tangible, visible stuff — water, oil, bread, wine — in order to get God’s invisible grace into us.

And so this is why in Catholic theology, we have another principle at work: That interior realities… should always be expressed through… reflected in….the external. That which is invisible… should always be communicated through and brought into alignment with that which is visible.

This is why it is so important for the Church to value and preserve beautiful, physical church buildings — the external beauty and grandeur of these places communicates the interior, invisible beauty, the wholeness, the robust completeness of our faith in the Lord.

Truth… is beautiful. So why wouldn’t we want to make our churches, the places where we encounter Truth…encounter Jesus Christ, who is the Truth… beautiful? Why wouldn’t we want to make our liturgies — our expression of worship… as beautiful and rich as possible?

I was watching a YouTube video recently titled “How Did The World Get So Ugly?” And the basic premise of the video was that if you really want to know something about any given culture… you have to look at what they have made.

Beautiful, healthy cultures…. make beautiful things.

Unhealthy cultures…cultures obsessed with money, power, utility, and convenience… make ugly things.

This is exactly what JRR Tolkien says in his classic book, The Hobbit, when he says that “Orcs made no beautiful things.” 

Orcs, of course, are very ugly. They are monstrous, fallen creatures! The interior ugliness of their souls… is expressed in the ugly things they make. They can only make twisted instruments of torture and war! Useful, efficient… but definitely not beautiful.

The Church, on the other hand… is objectively beautiful. The Church is the Mystical Bride of Christ. The Church is the Sacrament of Salvation. The Gospel is inherently attractive… so it’s only natural that we would want to make churches as glorious and beautiful as St. John Lateran!

But with this comes a serious challenge of course:

If we’re going to make beautiful places of worship — beautiful cathedrals, beautiful liturgies, beautiful vestments that express the integral beauty of the Catholic Faith — then our personal INTERIOR LIVES need to become beautiful as well!

We cannot fool ourselves by just keeping the OUTSIDE of the cup clean, while the inside is full of plunder and self-indulgence!

That’s what Jesus was confronting in our Gospel today, right?

He enters the Temple — this beautiful place of worship. Where His people could encounter His Presence… and what does he see?

Ugliness.

Interior ugliness.

The ugliness of greed. Of commercialism. Of idolatry.

Religious entrepeneurs had turned the Temple into a place of booming business… they were actively taking advantage of the thousands of pilgrims looking to buy animals for sacrifice and twisting this holiest place into a self-serving system of profit.

And what does Jesus do?

He drives them all out! He flips tables! He cries out: “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

Stop making my Father’s house so UGLY…!!!! It’s meant to be BEAUTIFUL inside and out!

This is a serious challenge for each one of us!

If we are truly the Temple of the Living God… if our hearts were made for the Lord Himself to come and dwell within… then we need to ask ourselves:

Have we prepared a suitable place for him? Are our souls beautiful? Have we repented of all our sins? Have we confessed them sacramentally?

If Jesus suddenly arrived at your temple today, what would he do?

Would he have to flip some tables?

Or would he go in and pray?

Conversion is usually pretty painful. It’s a process of Jesus flipping tables in our hearts. It’s a purification…a CLEANSING… BUT… it is also a beautification. God loves us so much that He wants to make each of our hearts into a gloriously beautiful basilica! A masterpiece of His grace!

This reminds me of one of my favorite passages from CS Lewis’ book Mere Christianity, which I think articulates these ideas quite well… 

He says this:

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

And so now we come to it:

We don’t have to imagine Jesus suddenly coming to our Temple.

He’s about to do exactly that in this Holy Eucharist.

He will arrive at the door of YOUR temple… you will open up your mouth, and he will enter in…

And so we humbly ask God to make our temples beautiful — to cleanse whatever it is that still needs to be cleansed, to drive out whatever needs to be driven out… and so prepare us to properly receive Him… the Lord of Lords, and King of Kings.