Vigils Reading – Lateran Basilica

DEDICATION OF

THE LATERAN BASILICA7

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The blessed Pope Sylvester I instituted the rites which the Roman Church

observes in consecrating churches and altars. For although from the ages of the

apostles places had been dedicated to God where assemblies were held every

Sabbath, yet those places had not been consecrated by a solemn rite before this.

Up to the time of Sylvester an altar was not erected under title, which, anointed

with chrism, symbolizes our Lord Jesus Christ, who is our Altar, our Victim, our

Priest

But when the Emperor Constantine obtained health and salvation

through the sacrament of Baptism, then for the first time, by an edict published

by him, the Christians throughout the world were permitted to build churches;

he himself encouraged this holy building by his own example, as well as by this

edict. For in his own Lateran palace he dedicated a church to the Savior and

founded adjacent to it a Basilica, under the title of St John the Baptist, on the

very spot where he had been baptized by St Sylvester and cleansed from the

leprosy of unbelief. This basilica the same Pope consecrated on November 9,

and the memory of this consecration is celebrated today, when, for the first

time, a church was publicly consecrated at Rome, and there appeared to the

Roman people an image of the Savior depicted on the wall.

Although later on St Sylvester decreed that from that time forward all

altars should be built of stone, yet the altar of the Lateran Basilica was built of

wood. This is not surprising. For since, from St Peter down to Sylvester, because

of persecutions, the Pontiffs could not dwell in any fixed abode, they offered the

Holy Sacrifice [of the Mass] wherever necessity compelled them, whether in

crypts or in cemeteries, or in the homes of the faithful, upon a wooden altar

which was hollow like a cheSt

When this altar had been placed in the first church, the Lateran, St

Sylvester decreed that from that time on, no one except the Roman Pontiff

should celebrate Mass upon it, in honor of the Prince of the Apostles and of the

rest of the Popes who had been accustomed to use it. This same church, having

been destroyed by fires, pillaging, and earthquakes, and repaired by the

laborious effort of the Supreme Pontiffs, was afterwards rebuilt anew. Pope

Benedict XIII, a Dominican, consecrated it on April 28, 1726, by a solemn rite.