#sspx #catholic #catholicchurch We have a special feast day today, the dedication of the archbasilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. It is interesting that the Church makes this a second class feast, while the feast of the dedication of St. Peter’s Basilica, which will take place next Tuesday, is only a third-class feast. The main reason for the special honor given to St. John Lateran is that it was the first official church of the Catholic Church. When you visit St. John Lateran in Rome, you see an inscription written on it: “the mother and head of all the churches in the world”. You know that Catholics were persecuted by the Roman Empire as soon as the Church was founded. Sts. Peter and Paul themselves were martyred in Rome. The persecutions continued for an extremely long time, for close to 300 years! Some Roman emperors were more aggressive than others in their attempt to destroy the Catholic Church but the fact is that the Catholic religion was more or less illegal for these 300 years. Imagine what it was like for the faithful during these difficult times. They knew that Our Lord was God; they knew that they belonged to the true faith. At the same time, they had a heavy price to pay for the practice of their faith. They could not use public buildings to practice their religion or build their own temples. They rather had to meet in secret, in their homes and in the catacombs. They had to be careful who they talked to. They had to be very discreet in telling people that they were Catholic. Think about how weary they must have been with this situation, when it continued decade after decade. The persecutions made it difficult to convert people to the faith, because everyone knew that the Empire did not like Catholicism. Everyone knew that they could be executed if they became a Catholic. Think of all the prayers that the Catholics of the first centuries lifted up to Heaven, to ask Our Lord to send them an emperor who would at least allow them to practice their Catholic faith in peace. Our Lord did not want to intervene right away to help these first Catholics. On the contrary, He wanted the first Catholics to be strong and sacrificial. He wanted them to have their life on the line at all times. For that reason, He waited! He waited not for 100 or 200 years, but for over 250 years. This is how we have the examples of all those martyr saints from the first centuries of the Church. This is why we have so many great saints to honor from those centuries. In due time, however, Our Lord decided that He would make His Church triumph. He decided that He would answer all of that blood that was shed and all of those prayers that were offered. He gave to the Catholics of the empire something they were always dreaming about but had never been given: an emperor who converted to the Catholic faith.
