Dedication of the Lateran Basilica ~ Year C

Spiritual Reflection

November 9, 2025 ~ Dedication of the Lateran Basilica ~ Year C (PDF)

“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” Jn 2:19

The Church is our Mother. Because of widespread secularization, our perception is that the Church is far from being supernatural. In the Apostles’ Creed we profess: “I believe in… the holy catholic Church.” This profession corresponds to an attitude expressed like this: I devote myself trustfully to the Church as if I were to devote myself to the Person of Christ. By abandoning yourself to the Church, you abandon yourself to Christ because the Church is His Mystical Body.

Henri Daniel-Rops, in his book titled Nocturnes, writes about a mosaic from the fourth century AD in the Bardo Museum in Tunis:

No Christian can look at that mosaic without being emotionally moved. It imperfectly portrays the front steps and colonnade of a basilica. It is made of antique stones resembling graffiti. Above the colonnade there is an inscription that causes this mosaic to become an expressive symbol. The inscription includes two significant words: Ecclesia Mater (Mother Church).

The fourth century was a time of great wars, of paganism that returned time and time again, and of persecution by Julian the Apostate. It was not easy or safe to openly admit that one belonged to Christ. Throughout the empire there was increasing unrest, political anarchy, and religious turmoil. Among continual threats and danger, when the blood of martyrs was still fresh in amphitheatres, someone wrote two striking and consoling words, surely engraved in the atmosphere of comforting prayer: Mother Church.

Does it require much imagination to understand those words in the same way our distant brother in Christ understood them when he arranged them with small stones into damp cement?…

The Church today, from the very depths of her maternal heart, offers the same support to the people of this century as she did to the people of the fourth century. In the face of great historical storms, in a world tormented so often by barbarianism, where people have lost understanding of the sense of human life, in a world that doubts everything including itself, the Church alone gives the impression that she knows well what she is aiming for. The Church alone reveals unchanging truths despite attempts to accuse her of striving for significance in public or political life.

In a world possessed by violence in which man seems to be fascinated with the tragic fatality of his own death wish and the prospect of total destruction, the Church repeats a simple and much needed lesson of love. She herself received this lesson on the hillsides of Galilee, and the blood of God sealed its truth on Calvary. In repeating this lesson of love, the Church remains Ecclesia Mater. (Translated by author: Henri Daniel-Rops, Nocturnes, [Paris:Grasset, 1956])…

Love of Christ that deepens through faith begets the desire to be a witness of Christ. Your call to sanctity and your love for the Church are also closely connected with the call to apostleship. Reminding Christians of their obligation to witness for Christ, John Paul II said, “Only profound love for the Church can support the fervor in giving witness. Faithfulness to Christ cannot be separated from faithfulness to the Church.  Tadeusz Dajczer, The Gift of Faith, pp. 194-198

References from the Catechism of the Catholic Church

168     It is the Church that believes first, and so bears, nourishes and sustains my faith. Everywhere, it is the Church that first confesses the Lord: "Throughout the world the holy Church acclaims you", as we sing in the hymn "Te Deum"; with her and in her, we are won over and brought to confess: "I believe", "We believe". It is through the Church that we receive faith and new life in Christ by Baptism. In the Rituale Romanum, the minister of Baptism asks the catechumen: "What do you ask of God's Church?" And the answer is: "Faith." "What does faith offer you?" "Eternal life."54

169     Salvation comes from God alone; but because we receive the life of faith through the Church, she is our mother: "We believe the Church as the mother of our new birth, and not in the Church as if she were the author of our salvation."55 Because she is our mother, she is also our teacher in the faith.

Questions for Reflection

1.          Do I love, trust and honor Holy Mother Church as I do my own mother who fed and raised me? Why or why not?
2.          What is my stance toward Mother Church in these perilous times? How do I perceive God’s love in my interactions with the Church?
3.          How can the example of the Mother of God help and sustain me when my spirit lags or my will fails in wholehearted love and devotion to the Church?

Prayer after Sharing

Thank you, God, for allowing me to see the truth about my weaknesses and how it calls upon the abyss of your merciful Love.