Bishop Schlert’s Sunday Gospel Reflection:
As we attend today’s Mass in our Allentown Diocese churches, we may wonder why we celebrate the dedication of a Basilica thousands of miles away.
The Basilica of St. John Lateran is the Cathedral of the Diocese of Rome, the official ecclesiastical seat of the Pope, the Bishop of Rome. Therefore, we call St. John Lateran the mother of all churches, the heart of our universal Church. We honor this church’s dedication—its consecration as a house of the Lord set apart for worship—and we thereby honor every church as a sacred space to encounter God. When we specifically remember St. John Lateran, we also reaffirm our unity to the papacy and the worldwide Church centered in Rome.
Churches are where the People of God come together in a common space to be nourished by the Word of God and Christ’s Body and Blood. We revere these holy places, yet we also recognize that the buildings themselves are not the fullness of the Church. Rather, they house the Church of living stones, God’s people.
Our readings today remind us that God lives in each of us by the grace of our baptism. We are temples, sacred and precious in the eyes of the Lord. This feast simultaneously honors the importance of our physical churches under the mother Church in Rome and the deep spiritual reality that we, God’s people, are the Church.
As St. Paul says in the second reading: “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.”
God protects and purifies His temples—each of us—just as Jesus cleansed the temple in today’s Gospel. Let us remember our own sacredness, allow God to make us ever holier, and strive to live as the temples we are.
Today, pray with me that zeal for the house of the Lord—both our institutional Church and the living Church of God’s people—may consume us. We also ask Our Lord to bless Pope Leo in a special way today as we honor his Archbasilica, and we give thanks to God for dwelling in our hearts and sanctifying us.
Please be assured of my prayers for you before Our Lord, present in the Most Blessed Sacrament.
+ Bishop Schlert
