Sunday Readings for November 8-9, Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome
By Fr. Jack Treloar, SJ | For On Mission
The readings this week are proper to the feast day we are celebrating, the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome. Since this church is the diocesan church of our Holy Father as bishop of Rome, the feast is celebrated throughout the world as a proper feast in all dioceses. This celebration involves replacing the usual Sunday readings with readings that are proper to the day. Therefore, we hear from Ezekiel, Paul, and the Gospel according to John.
Each reading talks about a temple. Ezekiel’s invocation of the temple reminds us that the holiness flowing from it is like a vast body of water as a source of life for all of creation. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul refers to the Christian believers in the city as the temple of God. Finally, in the Gospel, Jesus refers to the temple of his body. It is important to notice the progression of thought in these three readings: Ezekiel speaks of the physical temple in Jerusalem, Paul speaks of the people themselves as a temple, and John has Jesus identifying his own body as a temple.
The feast that we celebrate is a celebration of a temple as a holy place where God dwells among the people. Since we are people embedded in space and time, we designate certain places and times as exclusively consecrated to God.
Ezekiel describes a tiny trickle of water flowing from the ancient temple that grows into a mighty body of water, fertilizing the arid land surrounding Israel. He tells us that the resulting river even makes salt water fresh and allows an abundance of plant and animal life to flourish. This is all because of the holiness of the temple.
Paul takes us a step further when he identifies the people of God as the temple. So, temple refers not only to a physical building but also to the people who are, as it were, more deeply a temple than one made of stone, wood, and gold. He describes a temple of believing human flesh. The community at Corinth, in its time and place, functions as a temple, just as the physical temple did for the ancient Jewish people. The community now is a special dwelling place for God.
Finally, Jesus identifies his own body as a dwelling place of God. As with Ezekiel and Paul, the temple signifies a place sacred to God. We acknowledge this fact every time we invoke the Incarnation, saying that Jesus is both God and human.
Whether we invoke a physical structure, a community of individuals, or an individual person as a temple, there is something special about physical existence. In our culture, we often think of the physical as something merely to be used as a tool, as a group with no special importance, or as our own physical bodies as somehow inferior. These readings tell us about the importance of the physical and how we can incorporate it into our journey toward lives of holiness.
The readings for Sunday, November 9, can be found at Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome.