In the first three
hundred years of its existence the Church was persecuted throughout the world.
The persecution was somewhat sporadic. Sometimes, the Roman authorities would
close their eyes to Christians, not bothering with them. Other times they would
only persecute Christians if an individual Christian was denounced by someone.
Quite often, the Emperors, such as Domitian and Diocletian, would declare that
all Christians had to be found and put to death. Even
in the best of times, Christianity was a dangerous way of life. Christians had to meet in people’s homes, or
in underground cemeteries like the catacombs. They could not build Churches;
the authorities would know where they were. But Christianity continued to
spread throughout the Roman Empire. In
the year 313 the Emperor Constantine declared in the Edict of Milan that
Christianity would no longer be persecuted.
His mother, St. Helena, had become a fervent Christian. He would become
a Christian himself. Now, Constantine and his mother lived in a palace in Rome
that had been owned by the Laterani family.
Constantine turned a wing of that palace over to the Church. This was
the first Christian Church in Rome. It was dedicated to Our Lord the Redeemer
and to St. John the Baptist. Therefore it is known as the Basilica of St. John
Lateran[1].
From the pope of
that time, Melichiades, on to the present, St. John Lateran has been the
Cathedral Church of Rome. The popes themselves lived there until they moved to
the Vatican Hill in the late middle ages. The Cardinal that administers Rome
for the pope continues to do so from St. John Lateran.
What must it
have been like in those earliest days when Christians could call St. John
Lateran their own Church? Can you
imagine the emotion? They had their own
place. They could come to Church and worship openly, and without fear.
The first
basilica would have been modest, a simple structure, but then as time went on
rebuilding and refurbishing would provide a great, beautiful edifice for
worship. Still, from the very beginning the Christians knew that as great as
this building and other buildings might be, culminating in the Basilica of St.
Peter on the Vatican Hill, still, it was the people not the building that made
the Church.
St. Paul put it
this way to the Corinthians and to us: You
are God's building. ....Are you not aware that you are the temple of God, and
that the Spirit of God dwells in you?....The temple of God is holy, and you are
that temple[2].
Today’s
celebration is not really about a place, after all. It is about us. We are the Church! Together we are a place of
refuge from the terrors of the world. Together, united with Christ, we are a
people of love in a world of hatred. Sometimes you just want to run to a Church
to get away from it all. And we do. We
run to the Church as our one refuge of sanity. The Church we run to is not just
a building, it is the people. United
with Christ, we the Church, have the courage to oppose the idiocies and
inadequacies of our society.
The people who
first walked into St. John Lateran were elated to have their own building, but
they knew that they already had their own Church. They had the courage to
remain faithful to Christ throughout the persecution of the Romans and the
mockery of their world.
Like our spiritual
ancestors this morning we pray for the courage to remain faithful to Christ.
Faithful to Christ through the persecution of the so-called intelligentsia,
faithful to Christ despite the mockery of the world. And we will remain
faithful. We are as strong as the people who first worshiped at St. John Lateran.
We are the Church ■
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