On the very popular game show “Jeopardy” contestants are presented with the answer, and it’s up to them to try to figure out the proper question. In a future program, if the contestants were presented with the following answer: “The first major Christian basilica built in Rome, which functions as the Pope’s cathedral,” in all likelihood one of them would buzz in and say, “What is St. Peter’s Basilica?”
But that would be incorrect.
The correct response is: “What is the Basilica of St. John Lateran?”
We normally associate the Holy Father with St. Peter’s, and that’s quite understandable. We do that because Peter was the first pope, and because in recent centuries popes have lived in close proximity to St. Peter’s and have celebrated many important liturgies there.But every diocesan bishop has a cathedral (including the Bishop of Rome), and the cathedral of the Holy Father is actually St. John Lateran, which is why this past Sunday’s feast (the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome) has so much meaning.
It reminds us of our unity with the Holy Father in the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Faith. It’s really a day for us to thank God that we’re Catholic—that we are part of the one, true Church that Jesus Christ established more than 2,000 years ago; the Church that Jesus equipped with all the graces people need to attain eternal salvation. Those of us who are cradle Catholics can take all this for granted quite often, because we’re so familiar with it. It seems that at times converts and those outside of the Church need to remind us of just how blessed we are as Catholic believers in Jesus. Back in 1996, for example, the well-known advice columnist Ann Landers wrote a column which proved to be rather controversial. She began it with the important question: “Do you have any idea when your religion was founded and by whom?” She then listed a number of different religions, Christian and non-Christian alike. Among the Christian religions she mentioned was Lutheranism—she said that one was founded by Martin Luther in the year 1517. Anglicanism, she rightly noted, was started by King Henry VIII in 1534; the Methodist church, she said, was begun by John and Charles Wesley in England in 1744. She went on to mention several other Christian groups—among them Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Baptists. But it’s what she said about Catholics that startled many of her readers, especially her non-Catholic ones. She said—and these were her exact words: “If you are Roman Catholic, Jesus Christ began your religion in the year 33.”
Ann Landers (God rest her soul; she died in 2002) was absolutely correct! She was Jewish, but she understood something that many baptized Catholics don’t seem to understand or have sadly forgotten. She understood how blessed we are as Catholic Christians to be part of the spiritual family which Jesus Christ established in this world by his Passion, Death and Resurrection—the spiritual family through which our Lord gives us his Word in Sacred Scripture; the spiritual family through which we are taught the fullness of God’s revealed truth (the truth that can set us free); the spiritual family from which we receive the sacraments—the seven sacred, efficacious signs that help us to know God and love God and serve God in this life, so that someday we will live forever with him in his eternal kingdom.
So today, we should thank the Lord for our Catholic Faith, and for the gift of salvation that comes to us from Jesus Christ through his Church, founded on the rock of St. Peter. We should also pray very hard for the conversions of all those who are not members of the Church at the present time, because the Lord loves them and wants to save them, too.
