Sunday Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons: November 9th 2025

Saint John Lateran Basilica, main facade, engraving by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1749

Dedication of the Lateran Basilica.
In the UK, Remembrance Sunday.

This time of year is one in which our beloved dead are especially remembered, not only have we had All Souls, but our own religious commemorations of the faithful departed and the annual services of Remembrance make sure that those gone before us are not forgotten but recollected, remembered, and cherished. It is a wonderful gift we have from Mother Church that our dead are understood as part of our community now, with us in love and prayer, and will be with us in the life to come.

I'm using this theme as a way to move my own thoughts into that understanding of our Cathedrals as 'mother churches' in the sense of drawing us together, as living communities of parishes, monasteries, convents, and religious societies, united as the family of God, with our brother and saviour the Lord Jesus. For many years I wrote, researched and taught about church buildings, being a liturgical theologian my own understanding of them is as both a sacred place, in the sense of a focussed place of holiness but also our house of the people of God, where we leave behind distractions to concentrate on prayer, worship, the sacraments and liturgy of the Church through weeks, months seasons and years to celebrate and hear the Christ through the Word and grow closer to the Divine One.

For me the readings of the dedication of the mother Church of the Roman Catholic community, the Lateran Cathedral, bring out the purpose of such a building as a place where we celebrate the living stones of our faith, that is each other and our unity through what we celebrate in these places dedicated to God and the saints. Buildings are important but we must not make our sacred spaces into idols, they were and are built for a specific reason, the Christian Community in that place and our living vocation as temples of the Holy Spirit. This is exactly what St Paul means when he writes in the second reading of this feast :'

'Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.* (I Cor 2: 16,17) This is the real dynamic of this feast, pushing us to see the fabric of a building as a container for what is holy and that this holiness includes us all. At the last judgement we are not going to be asked about our pious practices or reverence in prayer or anything to do with our attitude to the sacraments and sacramental of the Church, important as these are for our growth in faith. No we will be asked about the way we received and loved Christ in each other, what we did and did not do to and for one another especially the least and forgotten amongst us.

I'll end by asking your prayers for our family, we have just lost our brother and others their father, the middle one of six siblings of whom I am the eldest. He fought long and courageously with pancreatic cancer, but died very peacefully last night having seen his siblings and surrounded by his three children. I was privileged to minister to him all this long year and at the end was able to give him the sacraments and the last rites. So fortified by love both of God and ourselves, he went forth to meet the Lord Christ. His name was Max Gibbons, he was an orthopaedic surgeon, well liked and loved. May he now rest in peace.

Reflection for the week

Preface for the Dedication of a Church

It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Father most holy. For you have made the whole world a temple of your glory, that your name might everywhere be extolled, yet you allow us to consecrate to you apt places for the divine mysteries. And so, we dedicate joyfully to your majesty this house of prayer, built by human labour. Here is foreshadowed the mystery of the true Temple, here is prefigured the heavenly Jerusalem. For you made the Body of your Son, born of the tender Virgin, the Temple consecrated to you, in which the fullness of the Godhead might dwell. You also established the Church as a holy city, built upon the foundation of the Apostles, with Christ Jesus himself the chief cornerstone: a city to be built of chosen stones, given life by the Spirit and bonded by charity, where for endless ages you will be all in all and the light of Christ will shine undimmed for ever. Through him, O Lord, with all the Angels and Saints, we give you thanks, as in exultation we acclaim:

Matthew 25:31-46

English Standard Version

The Final Judgment

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.

Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.'

Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?'

And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.'