About Today
Dedication of the Lateran basilica
Feast, 1969 Calendar, celebration November 9.
Dedication of the Basilica of St. Saviour, Com. of St. Theodore, 1955 Calendar, celebration November 9.
Today, November 9, the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome is celebrated.
The Lateran Basilica is the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome where the Bishop of Rome presides. This anniversary is a feast for all parishioners of the church. In a way, the Lateran Basilica is the spiritual home and the parish church of all Catholics, because it is the pope’s church.
The cathedral was called Archbasilica of the Most Holy Saviour and Sts. John the Baptist and the Evangelist at the Lateran and it is the oldest and ranks first among the four major basilicas of Rome.
The main door of the cathedral holds the inscription “omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput” (“mother and head of all the churches of the city and the world””). Was built after Constantine’s edict in 313, when he donated land he had received from the Lateran family. Pope Sylvester consecrated the cathedral in 324 to our Saviour, declaring to be Domus Dei or “House of God.”
From the time of Pope Miltiades until the reign of the French Pope Clement V, the cathedral was the Bishop of Rome’s residence.
Since 1309, when Pope Clement V decided to transfer the official seat of the Catholic Church to Avignon, the Lateran Basilica suffered fire, earthquake and the ravages of war. His sucesors worked with great zeal to rebuild it. After such a reconstruction, Pope Benedict XIII, in 1726, assigned the commemoration of the Lateran Basilica to the present day.
“What was done here, as these walls were rising, is reproduced when we bring together those who believe in Christ. For, by believing they are hewn out, as it were, from mountains and forests, like stones and timber; but by catechizing, baptism and instruction they are, as it were, shaped, squared and planed by the hands of the workers and artisans. Nevertheless, they do not make a house for the Lord until they are fitted together through love”
Source: St. Augustine, Sermon 36
Image Source: Late Baroque façade of the Basilica of St. John Lateran by Alessandro Galilei (public domain)
Excerpts from the English translation of The Liturgy of the Hours (Four Volumes) ©1974, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved.About Today
Dedication of the Lateran Basilica
November 9
CHRISTIANITY’S FIRST CATHEDRAL
Article by June Hager from February 1996 issue of Inside the Vatican.
Christendom’s earliest basilica and home of the Popes for a thousand years St. John Lateran on the Caelian Hill.
St. John Lateran is Christendom’s earliest basilica. Ordered by Rome’s first Christian Emperor, Constantine the Great, it became the Popes’ own cathedral and official residence for the first millennium of Christian history.
Today, standing before the basilica’s ponderous eighteenth- century facade, assailed by ear-splitting Roman traffic snarls on every side, we can hardly imagine this as the cradle of our religious heritage. (more…)
Excerpts from the English translation of The Liturgy of the Hours (Four Volumes) ©1974, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved.
