(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Mass-Blog-for-the-Feast-of-the-Dedication-of-the-Lateran-Basilica-in-Rome-2025.mp3)
Jesus called himself the Way, Truth and Life. He also referred to his body as a temple. This Sunday’s readings can help us understand our essential role in the grace that transforms a temple from a mere building into a life-giving presence.
A temple without worshippers would be an empty shell—as this world would be just a planet without humanity. The common denominator between the two is God’s Holy Spirit that gives purpose to everything.
Back to God the Son’s purposeful Way, Truth and Life.
Jesus showed us the WAY to God’s Kingdom. Our lives are stops along the Way, making our world a playground for God’s Wisdom.
Jesus told us the TRUTH about God’s Kingdom. Our lives are the poetry of His truth, adding dynamism to God’s constancy.
Jesus is the LIFE-giving vine through which God’s Spirit nourishes us, his branches. This grace lets us yield fruit that not only feeds others, but offers an infinity of flavors so we can give back to God some of the joy God gives to us.
We share God’s joy through worship. Sunday’s readings show how God uses us to transform churches and temples from buildings to beings. In the first reading (Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12), Ezekiel shows how water in God’s temple building was as life-giving as the blood in our bodies.
“Along both banks of the river, fruit trees of every kind shall grow; their leaves shall not fade, nor their fruit fail. Every month they shall bear fresh fruit, for they shall be watered by the flow from the sanctuary. Their fruit shall serve for food, and their leaves for medicine.”
If that doesn’t clarify our role in making God’s house a home, Paul gets us there in Sunday’s second reading (1 Corinthians 3:9c-11, 16-17):
Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person;
for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.
God’s temples are prophet-making enterprises, which is why Jesus drove the money-changers out of the temple building in Sunday’s gospel (John 2:13-22). His ransacking not only solved the immediate need to disinfect that building of humanity’s greed, but it taught us about the longer-term necessity for us to be the custodians of his resurrected temple. John’s gospel says his disciples had to be reminded what it meant for their Master to be a temple that fell and rose.
“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” Jesus told the self-proclaimed demolition crew he evicted and the custodians he was hiring. As this gospel reminds us, he was speaking about the temple of his Body.
And when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they came to believe the Scripture and the word Jesus had spoken.
That belief convinced them of their role in bringing humanity back home to the house of worship rebuilt atop the graveyard of our sins. Recirculating its life-giving water is more than a science. Sharing God’s joy with those who are thirsting for it is an art we are called to master.
–Tom Andel
He is not the God of the dead, but of the living for to Him, all are alive.
November is the month the church encourages us to consider our death. Not our final end, but the moment of truth when our life really begins. For we are alive in the spirit of Christ which we receive at our Baptism which is the ticket to eternal life with Christ, his mother, all the Angel’s and saints and hopefully those we know and love here.
The reminder is that Jesus purchased our ticket and he alone. The only question that remains is will we actually use it? Anyone can buy a ticket to an event for us, we still have to decide if we want to go. It’s always our choice. Go or not?
But don’t bring your baggage. The gate’s narrow, and the road leading there is rocky:
“He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick—-no food, no sack, no money in their belts.” (Mark 6:8)