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Today’s feast may strike us as somewhat unusual. We celebrate the anniversary of the dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome Nov. 9, 324. Why remember the dedication of one church in Rome with celebrations around the world? A little history is helpful. For the first three centuries following Christ, Christianity was illegal throughout the Roman Empire. Consequently, we had no public places of worship. Our worship of God, including Mass, was mostly done secretly and in private. Thanks be to God, the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and published the Edict of Milan in 313. This edict allowed Christians the freedom to practice the faith without persecution and to build places of public worship.

The Basilica of St. John Lateran was the first major church built in Rome. It was constructed on land donated by Constantine himself to Pope Militades. One can imagine that it was a very historical and wonderfully joyful celebration. A tradition of establishing annual celebrations of such dedication ceremonies arose in the church.

In time, the annual celebration of the dedication of this church was spread to the whole of the Western rite of the Catholic Church. This was done, in part, because St. John Lateran is the cathedral of Rome, the seat of the pope. In a sense, it is the cathedral of cathedrals because the church in Rome, in the words of St. Ignatius of Antioch, “presides in charity over the whole Catholic communion.” In fact, the façade of the basilica boldly proclaims, “The Mother and Head of All the Churches of the City and of the World.”

As important as the commemoration of the Basilica of St. John Lateran is, the church proclaims two other very important truths about our worship of God through her choice of the readings for this feast day.

First, our worship of God now finds its locus in Jesus Christ. Jesus has replaced the old temple. When Jesus tells the Jews in today’s Gospel that he will “destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” Our Lord was “speaking about the temple of his Body.”

Every significant event of the Old Testament pointed to Christ. Every intervention into human history by God was but a hint of what was to come in the work of the Messiah. From the time of Christ’s incarnation, the definitive saving action of the Almighty God would not be mediated by angels, humans or a temple made by human hands, but by his only Son. Jesus’ Passion, death and Resurrection, the Paschal Mystery, is the final and definitive saving work of God. That event, as well as the very person of Christ, is made present in the Mass, and Mass is now celebrated every day all over the world. Second, God desires that each believer become a temple of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, writes, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.”

We also worship God by the way we live our daily lives. St. Caesarius of Arles puts this truth quite eloquently: “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 not be in darkness, but that the light of good works shine in us, so that he who dwells in the heavens will be glorified.”

Our worship of God is twofold: We gather with our brothers and sisters in Christ, in sacred spaces like St. John Lateran or our Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington, to worship God by remembering and celebrating all that Jesus did for us through his Passion, death and Resurrection. Additionally, we worship God by the way we live our lives. Neither is complete without the other. Both make for proper worship of Almighty God.