Dedication of St. John Lateran

1st Reading: Ezk 47:1–2, 8–9, 12
2nd Reading: 1 Cor 3:9c–11, 16–17

Gospel: Jn 2:13–22
As the Passover of the Jews was at hand, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the Temple court he found merchants selling oxen, sheep and doves, and money-changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the Temple court, together with the oxen and sheep. He knocked over the tables of the money-changers, scattering the coins, and ordered the people selling doves, “Take all this away and stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace!”
His disciples recalled the words of Scripture: Zeal for your House devours me as a fire. The Jews then questioned Jesus, “Where are the miraculous signs which give you the right to do this?” And Jesus said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then replied, “The building of this temple has already taken forty-six years, and you will raise it up in three days?” Actually, Jesus was referring to the temple of his body. Only when he had risen from the dead did his disciples remember these words; then they believed both the Scripture and the words Jesus had spoken.

Commentary
Most Catholics think of St. Peter’s as the pope’s main church, but they are wrong. St. John Lateran is the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome, where the bishop of Rome presides. The first basilica on the site was built in the fourth century, when Constantine donated land, he had received from the Lateran family. That structure suffered fire and the ravages of war; but the Lateran remained the church where popes were consecrated, until they returned from Avignon in the 14th century to find the church and the adjoining palace in ruins.
    Pope Innocent X commissioned the present structure in 1646. One of Rome’s most imposing churches, St John Lateran’s towering facade is crowned with fifteen colossal statues of Christ, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, and doctors of the Church. Beneath its high altar rest the remains of the small wooden table on which, tradition holds, St. Peter celebrated Mass. St. John Lateran is, in a sense, the parish church of all Catholics, for it is the pope’s parish, the cathedral church of the Bishop of Rome. This church is the spiritual home of all Catholics!

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