A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, if you bring your gift to the altar and there recall that your brother has anything at all against you, leave your gift at the altar and go first to be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. And this is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.
Last year, just about this time, thanks to the generosity of of parishioner, I was in Rome and within a fifteen minutes walking distance of Saint John Lateran's Basilica. And I visited about every other day for two weeks. That was a great experience because I got familiar with that church. I had time to read a bit of its history. And you see, I know you're going to get tired of my saying it, but what impresses me, this is just my own reaction, is the continuity of the church of Jesus Christ.
I left this little hotel, the bled, and right on my left was a wall of the ancient city of Rome. So you walked along that for about fifth well, the wall didn't last that long, but it was a good distance relatively. And about fifteen minutes, I found myself in this Basilica Of Saint John Lateran. That church stands on an estate that came to Constantine through his wife Fausta. Goes all the way back to Maxentius through Nero.
Nero confiscated it. And somehow or other this estate got into the dowry of Fausta who became the wife of Constantine. Now we're talking about about March. And Constantine then had a church erected there and it was dedicated to the holy to the savior, Salvatore. Now this is about 300.
Now, from that day until the present time, I don't know how many times that church has been built, rebuilt, re parts of it replaced. For example, you look up and you see the wooden ceiling. That was started in the fifteenth century and completed only in the nineteenth. Remember, that's twice as old as the our Republic. We go down to Williamsburg, we said, oh, how ancient.
Gosh, that's child's play. I mean, that's nothing. Now, Gregory the great comes along. He died in 06/2004. He changed the name to Saint John.
Saint John meaning two Saint Johns. Saint John the Baptist, Saint John the Evangelist. Now, when you walk into there, remember, you're you're you're being taken back to about March, and you feel at home. Confessionals all around in all practically all the languages including Japanese and Chinese being heard all day. You go into a a beautiful chapel, the blessed sacrament chapel where the blessed sacrament reserved all day and people and there is a group of nuns.
That's all they do is adore the blessed sacrament. And I never will forget the I went there on a Sunday, it was you know, this is a vast church. Remember, this is the Cathedral church of Rome, not Saint Peter's. This is old a lot older than Saint Peter's. This is where the first scene of the holy of the pope was.
In 03/2013, you had the you had the council of saint of pope Melchizedek. In 03/2013, you had a council there, the Lateran Council, first Lateran Council. But to come back on, here was this vast church. And incidentally, ally, when I walked into the church in this vast esplanade before it, there was some kind of a carnival going on sponsored by the communist. So all around Saint John Lateran was the hammer and the sickle.
Well, I felt right at home there, of course. So I went over and had a Coke, thanks to the communist party. It was very good Coca Cola. Now, I got into that big church and you know the first thing I heard over that vast crowd and you know the and the murmur of tourists moving around and all of that was the cry of a little baby. Now, in that vast you know, the baby's cries, if you were in this pool, but you hear a little baby out there, it's just amazing what the the sound that could come out of that little body.
But in that whole vast church, you could hear that baby cry. I don't know. That appealed to me. And the day I the last visit there was on a Saturday. And I I was very struck by this.
Now here's a church not none of it goes back to the 300. I mean, anything you nothing you see there goes back to the year March. But there's been a church there since that time, and what you see there has been duplicated and reduplicated and destroyed. It's just amazing when you read this because the whole history of Italy is written into this. Anyway, here it was a Saturday and right around the main altar was a young young man, I guess in his early thirties, very well dressed, spoke very good English, at least it was better than my Italian.
And and his wife was there, and they were stringing not artificial flowers, but real roses against of some kind of green leaves all around the main auditorium. One by one they were doing this. Well, this was curious. So I went up and asked him what it was all about. He said we're having our first holy communion tomorrow.
So we had a little chat. And here the thing that appealed to me was the vigor of the faith of this pair. Now, I'm not exaggerating, but this just happened and I I'll never forget my my two weeks roughly that I had the opportunity of visiting this church. Now, what I'm trying to point out is there's more than a church here. I mean, building.
Remember when Saint John Vianney, the purity of ours went into that almost disaster parish, it it was. It was practically non existent. That you see they didn't know what to do with him, so they put him where he wouldn't do any harm. So they put him into a parish that practically had no future, and it had no present. The two things he did right off the bat were these, to start rebuilding the church and visiting each house to catechize the kids.
Two things, rebuilding the church and catechesis catechism. Two things. And he reconstituted that parish. Reconstituted it. But one of the first thing he did was to try to put that church together that that was in great state of dilapidation.
But you see, don't underrate what we call a building. A church is not just a public meeting place. Some people want to make that, you see. They say, after all, the first churches in Rome were basilica, the basilicas were just meeting places for the people. Don't be misled.
That's a very low grade opinion of a church. Think of the church in terms of the temple on top of Jerusalem. A church is the building and what the what that means. Remember, church is ekklesia. And ecclesia doesn't mean a building, it means a community of organized people doing their duty by the state, fulfilling their duties as citizens.
That was the ecclesia. And that's where we get our word church. I I don't mean that monologically, ecclesiae is is translated as the word church in English. And so let us this feature say, what does it mean to have an anniversary of dedication of church? It can mean a great deal.
And for what it means to me is continuity. Continuity with my presence in this pulpit this morning in Garrett Park, 1984, and the church of Jesus Christ reaching back century after century after century, being vandalized, being destroyed, being negated, being declared dead, century after century, and it rises from its ashes to bloom always with more vigor. With more vigor. Remember, the whole history of the Catholic church is a history of turmoil, turmoil, turbulence, right from the founder's own day when they sent him to the gibbet of the cross. We're no better than he.
But the but you see in all of this, I don't this is a very unique and very original remark. But you see when you stand there, history does stand still. And the the centuries evaporate. You talk about Constantine as if you could go down and have tea with him that afternoon. Because that's how real these things because you're seeing the artifacts, you're seeing the consequences of what he did.
I'm just using that as a tiny example. But that's you see, that's the continuity of the church of Jesus Christ. We need this kind of assurance, believe me. We're in a we're in a pretty bad state today, especially in The United States. No question about the church.
Listen, let's face it. It's much more serious than most people think. I don't know where it's going to end up, but it doesn't bother me. Kind of curious. You'll say, well, I wonder how to look two centuries from now.
And you say, two centuries? Who's gonna be around here two centuries from now? Well, I can't speak for you, but I don't expect to be. But what's two centuries compared to two thousand years? See?
And that's the church of Jesus Christ. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.