(Given at the 4:30 pm Saturday Mass and the 5:30 pm Sunday youth Mass at OLP)
What’s the pope’s church in Rome? Many of you, like myself in the past, would probably say St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s massive, and it’s the center of the Vatican. It even holds the bones of St. Peter himself. But that answer would be incorrect. The pope’s church is actually what we celebrate today: the Basilica of St. John Lateran. Now, I know what some of you might be thinking: who the heck is St. John Lateran? The funny thing is, he is not a specific saint. The church’s title is actually named after St. John the Evangelist, St. John the Baptist, and the land owned by the Lateran family. All the way back when the family donated the land to the emperor Constantine for the church to be built on. Many of our youth got to see this magnificent church when we went to Rome back in April. I’ve seen it twice. Until the late Middle Ages or so, it was even where the popes would be consecrated as such. It’s the Cathedral for the diocese of Rome and the mother church for the entire Catholic world. All of this definitely begs the question: who cares? Why do we Catholics care so much about our churches when we ourselves are temples of the Holy Spirit as the Catholic Church, the Body of Christ? Because Jesus did. Jesus cared enough to go to synagogue and to go the Temple in Jerusalem. He calls this temple, my Father’s house. God has chosen to dwell in these structures that now we as Christians call churches. First and foremost, in the Blessed Sacrament. In the Scriptures proclaimed. In all of us gathered here in Christ’s name. Yes, God is present everywhere, but he wants us here. It’s why we celebrate the Mass here, why we celebrate weddings here, why come to Mass every weekend here. God wants us here. To connect with him and to offer sacrifice to him here. It reminds me of a story I heard: A man asked a priest: “If God is everywhere, why do I go to Church?” The priest replied: “The whole atmosphere is filled with water; but when you want to drink you have to go to a fountain or a well.”