From the desk of the Tar Heel disciple:
November 17, 2025
This blog has already explored the major celebration observed each year by the Catholic Church on November 9: the Dedication of the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran. The Church’s Universal Calendar also has two more observances in the same month with similar themes. Though it is only observed as an optional memorial, the Dedication of the (two) Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles, is celebrated on November 18, and the memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, on November 21, is also related to the dedication of a church.
The Basilica of Saint Peter, constructed over his grave, is universally known. The Emperor Constantine built a church over that tomb around 330. Because of its dilapidated state, by the 15th century a new church was deemed necessary and envisioned. The ancient building was eventually dismantled, and the construction of a new church was begun at the dawn of the 16th century. The present basilica was consecrated on November 18, 1626.
The same Emperor Constantine saw to it that a small church was built over the tomb of Saint Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, outside the city walls of Rome. A larger church was begun in 386, which stood until 1823, when it was destroyed by a fire. The loss of that ancient church was mourned throughout the world and many contributed to the building of a new edifice, much in the style of its predecessor. The current church was dedicated on December 10, 1854, by Blessed Pope Pius IX, who established a single feast for the dedication of these two basilicas.
The memorial of the Presentation of Mary commemorates a purported event in the life of the Blessed Virgin, not told in any of the Gospels, but only known through the so-called Protoevangelium of James, an apocryphal work, possibly written at the end of the second century. According to the legend recounted therein, the three-year-old Mary was brought by her parents, Joachim and Anne, to the Temple in Jerusalem, where she was dedicated to God and where she subsequently remained in service until about the age of twelve. More historically certain is the commemoration of the “New Church of the Theotokos”(i.e., the God-bearer, namely, the Blessed Virgin Mary) dedicated in Jerusalem in 543. The legend came to be associated with this dedication anniversary, which in turn slowly spread from the East to the Church in the West, finally being accepted into the Roman Missal in 1585.
