The House of God is us

Sunday, November 9th, 2025 
 
Roman Rite  
Dedication of the Lateran Basilica 
Ez 47, 1-2.8-9.12; Ps 45; 1 Cor 3,9-11.16-17; Jn 2, 13-22 
 
Ambrosian Rite 
Last Sunday of the Liturgical Year - Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ King of the Universe 
2 Sam 7,1-6.8-9.12-14a.16-17; Ps 44; Col 1,9b-14; Jn 18,33c-37 
 
1) The Church is our home 
            The XXXII Sunday of Ordinary Time should have been celebrated today. Since, this year (2025), Sunday falls on November 9ⁱ - the Liturgy asks us to solemnize the dedication of the mother church of Rome, the Lateran Basilica, consecrated initially to the Most Holy Saviour and later to Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist.  
            The readings of today's Mass help us to seek a true and profound relationship of love with the Lord, who we meet in the stone church-temples dedicated to the encounter with Him, and especially in Christ “Temple of the living God” and in the Church built by us. However, before reflecting briefly on these texts, I believe it is useful to ask ourselves this question: “Why is it important for Christians to celebrate the dedication of a church and the very existence of the church, understood as a place of worship?” To answer, I take inspiration from these words of the Gospel: “The time has come when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, because the Father seeks such worshipers”. 
            However, these words raise other questions, such as: “In what capacity, then, do we Christians give so much importance to the stone church, if each of us can worship the Father in spirit and truth in our own hearts, or in his own home? Why this obligation to go to church every Sunday?”. 
           The answer is that Jesus Christ does not save us separately from each other. He came to form a people, a community of people, who are in communion with Him and with each other. 

           In fact, it should be borne in mind that religious men have always tried in every way to make divinity present and visible, even when faith affirmed that it was an invisible God inaccessible to human faculties. The chosen People, by divine will, built the famous temple of Jerusalem to give a home to God, enjoy his presence and bear witness to mutual fidelity to the alliance. In Christianity, the walled church, as the new temple of the God among us, has taken on a deeper meaning: it is the place where the faithful celebrate, in communion of faith, the divine mysteries. It is the place where God himself makes himself present among us to weave a perennial dialogue with us, his children, and where, under the Eucharistic species, he nourishes us with his body and his blood. It is the place where the divine mysteries are revealed in liturgical celebrations and where the church as a building makes visible the true Church, the one understood as a communion of faithful who, in Christ, experience brotherhood. It is therefore also the place of the feast, which finds its highest expression in the Eucharistic celebration, memorial of the death and resurrection of the Lord. 

          From the catechism lessons we learned that with baptism each of us became a temple of God and that Jesus taught that the temple of God is, first and foremost, the heart of the man who accepted his word. Referring to himself and his heavenly Father, he said of every Christian believer: “We will come to him and make our home with him” (Jn 14, 23) and Saint Paul writes to the Christians of Corinth: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God?” (1 Cor 3, 16). If, therefore, the temple of God is the believer, it should not be forgotten that the place of the presence of God and Christ is also the one “where two or more are gathered in his name” (Mt 18, 20). Since the Second Vatican Council, the Christian family has been called “domestic church” (Lumen gentium, 11), that is, a divine family temple, precisely because, thanks to the sacrament of marriage, it is, par excellence, the place where “two or more” are gathered in his name and where He is. 

 

2) The Church is the place of a Presence. 

         The new “place” in which to worship the Father is the body of the risen Christ. Jesus himself already mentioned it in the discussion with the Jews, who were greatly offended by having driven the sellers of animals and money changers out of the temple. As we read in today's Gospel, the Jews asked for a sign that explained why the Messiah had made that violent gesture. And Jesus answered with a prophetic sign: “Destroy this temple and I will resurrect it in three days”. He was speaking of the temple of his body as the disciples remembered after his resurrection. In the conversation with the Samaritan woman the same concept resurfaces. When asked where God was to be worshiped: on Mount Gerizim or in Jerusalem, Jesus, despite knowing that salvation will come from the Jews, places himself above those questions. The place where man can meet God is not Mount Zion in Jerusalem in Judea, nor Mount Gerizim in Samaria, but the person of Jesus, who dedicated his Body on the Cross, and since then every altar has been a sacrificial mountain. “And the time has come, and it is this, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (see today’s Gospel). God is Spirit and Life, as he is Love and Light. His worshipers do not prostrate themselves with sacrifices of blood and burned animals (holocausts), but rise to him in the Spirit, like beloved children who know how to love. 

 

3) Feast of Christ and ours. 

         Today is a celebration of the Son of God who became man and put his tent – his body - among us. The stone Churches are a sign of his presence: it is he who speaks to us, gives himself as food, presides over the community gathered in prayer. On the feast of the dedication of the Lateran Basilica, each local community, in addition to expressing its communion with the See of Peter, also remembers and celebrates the dedication of its local church, whether small or large. Jesus teaches that the temple of God is, first and foremost, the heart of man who welcomes his Word. And whenever this Word is accepted, Jesus says: “We will come to him and make our home with him”. 

         Therefore, today's celebration is not strange, even if it seems to honor ancient and important “walls”, those of the Basilica of Saint John in Lateran, and the readings of the Mass invite us to shift attention to their symbolic meaning.  Of course, this feast reminds us of the symbolic value of this Cathedral, which refers to the Chair of Peter and his successors, the Popes, as a point of reference and guarantors of the unity of faith. However, today we celebrate, above all, the Church as a spiritual building, of which, as Saint Paul reminds us in the second reading, we are the living stones, built on the foundation that is Christ. 

        “If God's house is us, we are edified in this life to be dedicated at the end of time. The building or, rather, the construction involves effort and its dedication is a source of joy. What occurred while the church was being built happens now that the believers have gathered in Christ. Just as the church was born from the wood of the forests and the stones of the mountains, through baptism and catechesis the living stones were roughed up, squared, smoothed almost as if they were in the hands of bricklayers and artisans” (Saint Augustine, Serm. 336, In dedicatione Ecclesiae). 

       The Consecrated Virgins around the world live this dedication with intensity, offering themselves body and soul completely to Christ following the example of the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church. Our Lady was the first tent of the Word of God, the one who, first and only, gave body to the Body of Christ. I therefore suggest asking the Most Holy Mary to be able to faithfully guard in our hearts the One She also guarded under her heart. Our prayer to Our Lady and the example of the consecrated Virgins will help us to abandon ourselves to the Spirit. Only in abandonment to the Holy Spirit is the mystery of the extension of the Incarnation, which is the Christian life, of the extension of the divine Incarnation, which is the very mystery of the Church and of the holiness of each of us. 

 

Patristic Reading 

Saint Caesarius of Arles, bishop
 

(Sermo 229, 1-3: CCL 104, 905-908) 

 

We have all been made temples of God through baptism
 

 

My fellow Christians today is the birthday of this church, an occasion for celebration and rejoicing. We, however, ought to be the true and living temple of God. Nevertheless, Christians rightly commemorate this feast of the church, their mother, for they know that through her they were reborn in the spirit. At our first birth, we were vessels of God’s wrath; reborn, we became vessels of his mercy. Our first birth brought death to us, but our second restored us to life.

Indeed, before our baptism we were sanctuaries of the devil; but after our baptism we merited the privilege of being temples of Christ. And if we think more carefully about the meaning of our salvation, we shall realize that we are indeed living and true temples of God. God does not dwell only in structures fashioned by human hands, in homes of wood and stone, but rather he dwells principally in the soul made according to his own image and fashioned by his own hand. Therefore, the apostle Paul says: The temple of God is holy, and you are that temple.

When Christ came, he banished the devil from our hearts, to build in them a temple for himself. Let us therefore do what we can with his help, so that our evil deeds will not deface that temple. For whoever does evil, does injury to Christ. As I said earlier, before Christ redeemed us, we were the house of the devil, but afterward, we merited the privilege of being the house of God. God himself in his loving mercy saw fit to make of us his own home.

My fellow Christians, do we wish to celebrate joyfully the birth of this temple? Then let us not destroy the living temples of God in ourselves by works of evil. I shall speak clearly, so that all can understand. Whenever we come to church, we must prepare our hearts to be as beautiful as we expect this church to be. Do you wish to find this basilica immaculately clean? Then do not soil your soul with the filth of sins. Do you wish this basilica to be full of light? God too wishes that your soul be not in darkness, but that the light of good works shine in us, so that he who dwells in the heavens will be glorified. Just as you enter this church building, so God wishes to enter your soul, for he promised: I shall live in them, and I shall walk the corridors of their hearts.