Sunday Homily, 9 November 2025 - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

St John Lateran wasn’t the first church in Rome.  By the time of Constantine, there were about forty Christian churches dotted through the city.  They were often associated with the lives of martyrs: one was a patron’s old house before he and his family were done in; another was the bishop’s urban hide out; another was where heroes were buried.  Excavations of these sites revealed houses with internal walls removed: large indoor spaces were needed to accommodate all the people.

One place where our Christian forebears worshipped God was the home of a Senator Pudens.  We’re told the Apostles Peter and Paul stayed there as his guests.  Eventually, the house was abandoned and became public baths.  Then, in the middle of the Second Century, Christians acquired the house and turned it into a church.  The popes lived at Santa Pudenziana for a couple of centuries before Constantine.

These insights put paid to the claim that Christianity before Constantine was informal and malleable, fluid and lay-led.  The Roman bishops and deacons pastored their people and provided for them with the best resources available.  They arranged catechesis for the people, divine worship to sanctify them, and charity for all in need.  Christians lost their lives in the persecutions because the authorities knew where to find them.

When Constantine baptized his empire, he gave the popes the Lateran Palace which he’d inherited.  In Christian hands, its basilica was converted and enlarged.  Whereas people used to meet in the Lateran Basilica for public ceremony and legal proceedings, they now use it exclusively for the worship of the one true God in Christ.

And so, on the ninth of November 324, Pope Sylvester dedicated the Lateran Basilica as a Christian church, Rome’s Cathedral, with the title Christ our Saviour.  It is the oldest public church in Rome, crowning all the private churches of yesteryear.

So, what are we celebrating, a spell of Christian appropriation?  A neat bit of political upcycling?  In part, we’re celebrating the stability of the Church in Rome, the God-given stability of the Church in Rome.

The Lateran Basilica, and indeed any church dedicated by a bishop, is a sign of how well established the Christian people are.  Our church buildings are a testament to the kind of presence Christians have in that place.  They speak to the locals of the kind of neighbours they have.  I hope your neighbours appreciate the fact they have Christians next door.  Our church buildings speak to how peacefully the people live in that place.  We don’t build churches where we don’t live.  We don’t build churches where we won’t stay.    We know this from the story of our own parish.

St Dominic’s Church wasn’t the place where the first Mass in the parish was celebrated.  That was in the priory’s parlour.  At the first Mass in Camberwell’s East, there was the Dominican Parish Priest, his altar server (another Dominican priest), and twenty-nine people.  They met in the parlour, not only because that was all the space they had, but also because it was all the space they needed.  But they thought of us, and built a church suited to our needs.  Their church which we’re in, says that we’re here to stay.  It tells other Christians that Camberwell is a safe place to worship God in Christ.  It speaks to our neighbours that they live among people who love them and are ready to share their faith with them because they love them.  So much for our parish, all the more so for the Diocese of Rome.

St John Lateran’s is the first public church in Rome.  Before we took possession of it, we made do with smaller structures – whatever we could find and fit into.  They were signs of our survival and struggle in spite of zealous love for the one true God.  Their patrons were ready to come out into the light of imperial day as soon as they were sure it wouldn’t burn them. 

When the Empire finally smiled on Christ’s Church, her people adorned its cities with magnificence and order and beauty, beginning with the Lateran Basilica.  We received the Empire’s town halls from its rulers, and made them into temples fit for God.  We lifted away the veil of mourning for Rome’s martyrs to show the world faces radiating the splendour of divine grace.

So, whenever we celebrate this great and happy feast of Christ and his Church, we give thanks to God for all that he has made us.  We renew our pledge to give him our very best in all things, including our worship of him.  And we ask him to make us grow in faith and number, so that heaven will be full of his faithful.

Fr Paul Rowse, OP Parish Priest