The House of God and the Gate of Heaven
MASS Terribilis est locus iste
EPISTLE Apocalypse 21:2–5
GOSPEL St Luke 19:1–10
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
The church whose dedication we celebrate today has a distinction that even St Peter’s Basilica cannot claim. St John Lateran is the cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, and bears the ancient title Mother and Head of all the churches of the City and of the World. It was established under Constantine in the fourth century, when Christians, so long accustomed to persecution, could at last worship publicly. The building has suffered fire, ruin and rebuilding, and much of what we see today is considerably later than Constantine. Yet it remains the cathedral of the Roman Pontiff, a witness to the continuity of the Apostolic See amid the many changes of earthly history.
Its first dedication was to Our Saviour. Only later did the names of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist become attached to it. This is worth remembering, because the Gospel appointed for today’s Mass tells us exactly why a church should be dedicated to the Saviour, and what we ought to expect when we enter His house.
The Introit begins with Jacob’s words, Terribilis est locus iste: “How terrible is this place!” Jacob had dreamed of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, with the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. Awakening, he exclaimed: “Indeed the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.” The word terrible expresses the reverential awe of a man who has encountered the divine Majesty and knows that he stands before One infinitely greater than himself.
There is something searching in Jacob’s admission: “I knew it not.” The danger for those of us who attend Mass regularly is not that we are unfamiliar with the ceremonies, but that we may become so accustomed to them that we cease to consider their meaning. We genuflect, kneel, make the responses, and sometimes discover that our attention has wandered to a hundred other concerns. There is no reason to be surprised that the mind is distracted; the question is whether we make the effort to recall ourselves to the presence of God.
Upon a Catholic altar the one sacrifice of Calvary is made sacramentally present. After the Consecration Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, is truly, really and substantially present beneath the appearances of bread and wine. The angels whom Jacob saw in his vision adore Him. We are allowed to approach the same Lord, and even to receive Him in Holy Communion. If Jacob was filled with awe because God had manifested Himself in a dream, what reverence ought to accompany our entrance into the sanctuary where Christ dwells in the Blessed Sacrament?
This is why the Church has always cared about the manner in which divine worship is conducted. The silence before Mass, the genuflection, the care with which the sacred vessels are handled and the ordered ceremonies of the liturgy are expressions of belief. They teach the body to assist the soul in adoration. Such reverence should never become an empty habit; nor is it an obstacle to loving God intimately. The better we understand Whom we worship, the more astonishing His invitation to approach Him becomes.
The Communion antiphon gives us Our Lord’s words: “My house shall be called the house of prayer.” He spoke them when He drove the traders from the Temple. He would not permit His Father’s house to be treated as though it existed for the ordinary business of men. A church is consecrated precisely so that the affairs which occupy our days may yield, for a little while, to what matters eternally. We come there to adore God, to ask His mercy, and to receive the help without which we cannot attain salvation.
Yet the Gospel takes us away from the Temple and into a private house in Jericho. Zachæus, the chief publican, was a wealthy man and, by reason of his profession, hardly an admired one. Hearing that Jesus was passing, he wanted to see Him. The crowd obstructed his view, so he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree. One can imagine the spectacle of a prosperous official perched among the branches like a schoolboy. But at that moment Zachæus cared more about seeing Christ than maintaining his dignity before the neighbours.
When Our Lord reached the place, He stopped and called him by name: “Zachæus, make haste and come down; for this day I must abide in thy house.” The publican had hoped for a glimpse of Christ; Christ intended to be his guest. Grace had already moved the man to seek Our Lord, and now Our Lord invited him into a friendship he had scarcely imagined. The bystanders grumbled that Jesus had gone to lodge with a sinner. They knew the man’s reputation, but they had not understood the purpose of the Saviour’s coming.
Zachæus received Him joyfully, and then promised to give half his possessions to the poor and restore fourfold anything he had taken unjustly. His repentance had consequences: those whom he had injured were to receive restitution, and his wealth would no longer command his heart. Only then does Our Lord announce, “This day is salvation come to this house.” He concludes, “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
Here is the meaning of the Lateran’s dedication to Our Saviour. The church building is set apart for God because there, through the preaching of the Faith and the celebration of the sacraments, Christ continues His saving work. He seeks sinners, calls them to repentance, forgives them, feeds them with His own Body and strengthens them for the life of grace. It is why the Church has laboured to build sanctuaries, and why the faithful have sacrificed so much to preserve the Mass when their churches were taken from them. A Mass offered behind closed doors in penal England served the same divine purpose as Constantine’s great basilica in Rome.
The conversion of Zachæus obliges us to consider what happens after we have received Christ. We may be grateful for the beauty of the liturgy, cherish the traditions handed down to us, and rightly take care that God is worshipped with reverence. The grace of the sacraments is intended to make us holy. If we approach Holy Communion, we should also endeavour to amend our faults, forgive injuries, fulfil our duties honestly and love those whose salvation God has placed, in some measure, within our care. Zachæus did not leave his encounter with Our Lord merely pleased to have met Him; he became a different man.
The Postcommunion speaks of God preparing an eternal dwelling from “living and chosen stones”, and prays that material growth in the Church may be accompanied by spiritual increase. St Peter uses the same image of Christians as living stones built into a spiritual house. The consecrated building therefore teaches us something about ourselves. By Baptism we have been made members of Christ and temples of the Holy Ghost, called to a holiness suited to the God Who dwells within us by grace. The consecration of a church serves the sanctification of those who worship within it.
In the Epistle, St John beholds the heavenly Jerusalem descending from God, and hears the words: “Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and He will dwell with them.” The earthly sanctuary points towards that final dwelling, where the blessed shall see God face to face. Our commemoration of St Theodore, the soldier and martyr, recalls the cost at which the saints have sometimes held fast to this hope. Tradition remembers him praising God amid his sufferings, and the Collect asks that we may imitate him. His loyalty to Christ was stronger than the fear of death, because he knew that the promises of God were worth more than any earthly advantage.
My dear brethren, the time will come when each of us attends Mass for the last time, and when our opportunities for confession and Holy Communion are at an end. We do not know when. We do know why these opportunities have been given to us. The Lord Who called Zachæus by name calls us to receive Him, to turn from sin and to persevere in His grace. May we not have to say at the end of our lives, “The Lord was in this place, and I knew it not.” Rather, having worshipped Him here in faith, may we enter at last through the gate of heaven, where the dwelling of God with men shall be ours for ever.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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