From a homily on the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome by Lanspergius the Carthusian
The dedication we are celebrating today concerns, in reality, three houses. The first is the material sanctuary… Certainly, we are to pray everywhere and there is nowhere where one cannot pray. Nevertheless it is very fitting to have consecrated a particular place to God where all of us, we Christians who make up this community, can meet, praise, and pray to God together and thus more readily obtain what we ask for as a result of common prayer…
The second house of God is the people, the holy community who find their unity in this church, that is to say you who are guided, taught, and fed by the one shepherd or bishop. It is God’s spiritual dwelling of which our church, this material house of God, is the sign. Christ built this spiritual temple for himself… It is a dwelling formed of God’s elect, past, present, and to come, gathered through their unity of faith and love in this one church, daughter of the universal Church, and in addition, one thing with the universal Church…
The third house of God is each holy soul dedicated to God, consecrated to him by baptism, who has become the temple of the Holy Spirit, and God’s dwelling place… When you celebrate the dedication of this third house, you are simply recalling the favor you received from God when he chose you so that he might come to live in you by his grace.
