Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome
Today is the feast of the dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome. This feast celebrates the mother church of the Catholic Church. It's not often in our liturgical calendar that we have a high feast that honors a physical place and not a Saint. This focus on a building and a place should give us pause.
Our faith is incarnational. God works and acts within history, God dwelt with us in Christ, and God continues to dwell with us through the Holy Spirit, the Church, the Sacraments, and the Eucharist. God's grace is so wonderful and overwhelming that he purifies the human person and pours his Spirit into us so as to make us temples of his very presence. God's dwelling and action in history are sacred moments and alter the human experience for the better. The Lateran basilica is sacred as a physical sign of Christ's Church, of the Papacy, and of the reality that God continues to dwell in our world even today.
Let us give thanks today for the gift of God's dwelling in the Church, in the Eucharist, and within each of us through Baptism. Let us pray that we can live and act as an icon of our God who seeks to transform us as holy Christians.