11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Homily for 18 June 2006
Fr. Robert Weiss

Who is a father? For that matter, who is a mother? When our daughter finishes a phone conversation from Duesseldorf, Germany with “I love you, Papa!” she makes my day as a father. When our son leaves after an Easter Sunday visit with “I love you, Mama!” he makes my wife’s day as a mother. We do not need the 2nd Sunday of May nor the 3rd Sunday of June (in Germany, Ascension Thursday) to be honored as mother, father and parent. Every day can be “Mother’s Day” and “Father’s Day.”

The word “father” has many meanings: protector, founder, creator, inventor. Also there are different kinds of father: biological, step-, foster, legal, putative, and in the USA “reverend” (though not in Germany where the word used is “pastor”) – you name it! There are good fathers and there are those who cop out on their role as nurturers. We can pray today that we who are parents can be strengthened in the role God has blessed us with.

Dal Schwaller, an 81-year old prisoner of conscience, just finished two months in the federal penitentiary in Oxford Wisconsin. He is the father of Suzie, confined to a wheelchair all her life, and of Pete who is in special education. While in prison, Dal wrote of his many impressions of the people imprisoned for non-violent crimes and separated from their families: absent parents, absent fathers and mothers who so want to be with their families.

He also wrote a story of a young son who couldn’t get his father’s attention. One day the son asked him why he was so busy and how much he earned. “$15 an hour,” was the answer. Three months later the boy plunked down $45 and said, “I would like to have three hours of your time.”

Before we celebrate and share Eucharist today, we join together in voicing the “Our Father,” that Jesus taught us as the way to pray to God. Let it be the cause for our reflecting on what parenting – mothering and fathering – ought to be.

Today we also celebrate Corpus Christi, from the Latin for “body of Christ.” In the traditional church calendar, it is celebrated three weeks after Ascension Thursday. In Germany this feast is a national holiday as well as a church holyday. All over the country, morning processions with the Eucharist take place, having preference over vehicular traffic. The inevitable back-ups give people the opportunity to think about this feast that began in the 13th century. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote hymns to honor it. Some of the finest classical and liturgical music was inspired by this feast.

The teaching behind the title is that Jesus Christ became human for us and gave us the Eucharist, his body and blood, which we share in faith as the unifying memorial of his life after his Ascension. In the verse we can ponder after today’s Communion, Jesus says: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood, remain in me and I in them.” These are weighty words, full of responsibility and promise!