livingtheword

Download Feast of the Dedication of Lateran Bascilica. 

Reflection Questions

1. The celebration today marks the oldest of the major churches in Rome and the Church which belongs to the ‘Bishop of Rome’ (many people may think it is St Peters). Today we have an opportunity to reflect on the significance and meaning of ‘Church’ as a building and also as a ‘people’.
2.  The Prophet Ezekiel was also a Priest and was in the first group of Israelites to be taken away from their homeland and put in exile in Babylon. This passage is a prophecy and a reminder from God just how special the ‘Temple’ and ‘Jersualem’ and its people are in the world. Jersualem becomes an image of God’s people. The Temple becomes an image of the Parish / Church today.  What does it mean for the ‘church’ to be like life-giving water flowing out into the world, making everything ‘fresh’, and the fruit and leaves produced being ‘medicinal’ for the world?
3. St Paul has a deep experience of linking the temple to each disciple. We have become the ‘meeting place’ where people can experience God. Do you know God dwells in you? Do you know the ‘temple of God, which you are, is holy’? One of the first public actions by Jesus in the Gospel of John is to ‘cleanse’ the temple. ‘My Fathers house’ is said 27 times in the Gospel of John. It was an expectation of the Messiah that when he comes he would ‘cleanse the temple’ and restore it to become really and truly a proper house of God. Jesus sees sheep and cattle and money changers turn the ‘house of God’ into a market. When you look at the Church, what do you see? What upsets you? What would you like to ‘cleanse’?
4. Some scholars share that the actions of Jesus are very significant. Jesus does this action at the time of the ‘passover’. He replaces the ‘temple’ with his own ‘body’. On the second Passover he replaces the ‘passover’ with the ‘bread of life’ (John 6). On the third Passover Jesus sacrifices his body on the cross, instead of the Passover lamb in the temple to be the ‘sacrifice that takes away the sins of the world’. If the temple was the place to ‘meet God’, can you recognise how we now meet and become one with God in the Eucharist celebrated at Mass? Is the building special or the celebration that takes place within it more special?
5. What is one action that you will do to be ‘livingtheword’ this week?