ROME – As he did with his disciples at Passover, Jesus asks all Christians to prepare a place for him, not in "exclusive, selective places" but rather in uncomfortable places that are "untouched by love, untouched by hope," Pope Francis said.

ROME – Almost a year and a half after an August 2016 earthquake in the central area of the Italy, a tabernacle with 40 intact and consecrated hosts was found amid the rubble in Our Lady of the Assumption church in the town of Arquata.

Christian de Cherge, the Trappist Abbott who was martyred in Algeria in 1996, tells this story of his first communion. He grew up in a Roman Catholic family in France and on the day of his first communion he said to his mother: “I don’t understand what I’m doing.” She answered simply: “It’s okay, you don’t have to understand it now, later you will understand.”

Dedication of the Lateran Basilica (Year A) Nov. 9 (Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12; Psalm 46; 1 Corinthians 3:9b-11, 16-17; John 2:13-22)

In ancient Israel the temple was a rich metaphor for the life-giving presence of God. For people of the ancient world, temples were theology books in stone. Their mathematical proportions and symbolic structures were meant to reflect divine and cosmological principles. The temple was often referred to as the navel or axis of the world.