November 9, 2025 - Beauty for God's Sake...and For Ours

 

Homily for Dedication of St. John Lateran

November 9, 2025

Beauty, for God’s Sake And Ours

 

            The year was 313 AD. Christianity had just become legalized through the Emperor Constantine, whose mother St. Helen was a Christian. But Constantine himself had no immediate interest in religion – he was interested in power and love. And he happened to fall in love with a noblewoman named Fausta, who lived in a palace on the south side of Rome called the Lateran Palace.

            Marrying Fausta meant that the palace became the Emperor’s, but he didn’t really need it, so he gave it to the Pope to please his saintly mother. The Pope ordered it to be turned into a church – at the time, the largest and grandest in Christianity. It was dedicated as St. John Lateran, and to this day it serves as the Pope’s official Cathedral – that is, the Church where he officially serves as Bishop of Rome and of the whole world. As the inscription above the church reads, “[This is the] Mother and Head of All Churches in Rome and in the World” – pretty doggone important. Today is the day we celebrate its dedication, back in the 324.

            But it begs the question – if God is everywhere, why do we need church buildings? A traveler to the Vatican might be scandalized by the opulence of the churches there – grandiose Baroque buildings filled with gold and silver and precious stones – wasn’t Jesus a poor carpenter from Nazareth? Do such churches disrespect His memory and prevent the Church from its mission to be close to the poor?

            Not at all – we build beautiful churches, to the best of our ability, for two main reasons: one about us, and one about God.

            First, we build it for us. A beautiful Church shows us that we have an immortal soul – we are not just merely bodies taking up space. Have you ever seen Communist architecture? It is very functional, but completely devoid of beauty – their apartment buildings are just square blocks, their statues are often brutal abstract concrete shapes without any meaning. Communist philosophy was ultimately materialistic – believing that human beings had no soul, but were just cogs in an economic machine. But because we have souls, we express ourselves in beauty – and the most spiritual things, such as prayer and worship, deserve the highest beauty.

            But we also build beautiful churches because they visually demonstrate the truths of our Catholic Faith. Gaze upon this Church and see the life of Christ in the stained-glass windows…see the crucifix to viscerally behold God’s love for you…observe how the gold tabernacle reflects our belief that Jesus Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. In 988, King Vladimir of Russia needed to unite his vast empire which stretched from Ukraine all the way to China, and he knew that having one religion for the whole country would be a powerfully unifying factor. So he sent emissaries to the three surrounding religions: to an Islamic mosque, to a Jewish synagogue, and to Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, which was the largest Christian Church in the world. When the emissaries returned, they said that when they were at the Divine Liturgy in Hagia Sophia, “they didn’t know whether they were in Heaven or on earth.” So the Czar converted to Christianity, and the whole Russian country followed suit – converted because of the beauty of the Faith.

            Which brings us to another reason: beauty in churches makes us long for the infinitely greater beauty of Heaven. One time a priest was assigned to an inner-city church – one of those old-fashioned Gothic marvels with exquisite stained glass and a marble altar and old chalices made of gold. But the city had gone to seed, and the neighborhood was filled with poverty, homeless people, drug dealers. So the priest decided that to win over the hearts of his poor congregation, he would sell the beautiful artwork and chalices in the church and give the money to the poor. So he began to sell off the vestments, the gold and silver, the beautiful paintings on the wall. But to his surprise, instead of making the people grateful, they began to stop coming to church one by one, until there were only a handful of old-timers left. Finally the priest asked one elderly man, “Why didn’t the people appreciate what I did for them? I sold everything in the church so they could have food! Why is no one coming to church?” The old man replied, “Well, father, coming to church was the only time they got to enjoy something beautiful in their poor and miserable lives. You’ve taken that away from them, so they see no reason to go.” Indeed, to step into a beautiful Catholic Church is to step into a foretaste of Heaven, which gives us hope amidst an often-difficult life. Beauty should make us desire God, the All-Beautiful One!

            But we build beautiful churches for God, too. It can be such an act of heartfelt love to give our best to God. St. John Vianney, for example, possessed only two sets of clothes and his shoes would often have holes in them, because whenever someone gave him a little income, he would use it to buy flowers for his church or purchase a new statue of a saint. Or, for example, it took 120 years to build St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, which means that most of its craftsmen and artists never even got to see it finished – they did it solely for the glory of God! This building isn’t beautiful just for us, it’s beautiful because we honor God when we give Him our best.

            But it also recognizes Who is here. Unlike Protestant churches, which are really just meeting halls for prayer, a Catholic Church contains God Himself in the Holy Eucharist. In 2004, my home parish church in Maryland burned to the ground in a tragic accident. But as the church was aflame, my pastor ran into the burning building to rescue the Eucharist. He didn’t take out the priceless art or the valuable vessels – no, the only thing worth risking his life for was Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Thankfully, he and the Lord both got out alive. But it was an important lesson to me that the Eucharist is not a sign or symbol but Someone who is worth giving our lives for – and worth any expense to build a beautiful church to house Him.

            My friends, there should be no distinction between building beautiful churches and serving the poor. Both honor the Body of Christ – His Body in the Eucharist, and His Body in the distressing disguise of the poor. St. John Chrysostom gave a famous sermon on this when he said:

            Of what use is it to weigh down Christ’s altar with golden cups, when he himself is dying of hunger? First, fill him when he is hungry; then use the means you have left to adorn his altar. Will you have a golden cup made but not give a cup of water? What is the use of providing the altar with cloths woven of gold thread, and not providing Christ himself with the clothes he needs? Once again, I am not forbidding you to supply these adornments; I am urging you to provide these other things first. No one has ever been accused for not [decorating a church], but for those who neglect their neighbor a hell awaits with an inextinguishable fire and torment in the company of the demons. Do not, therefore, adorn the church and ignore your afflicted brother, for he is the most precious temple of all.

            So, it is a both-and – we honor the Lord when we serve Him in the needy, and we honor the Lord when we build beautiful churches for His glory. Let us not neglect either one.