Homily: the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ – Cycle A
Father’s Day, like Mother’s Day, is a
great day because it is a day of remembering: remembering so as to honor. If we stop for just a moment and think about
it, we’ll see that this truly is a beautifully human thing: that we pause to
recognize that there is something honorable in parenting (and, specifically,
this weekend, in fatherhood). That this
year’s celebration of fathers coincides with our celebration of the Most Holy
Body and Blood of Christ provides us with an excellent opportunity to reflect
on fatherhood and the Eucharist.
When we look at the Sacred Scriptures
and the life of Jesus we detect many aspects of what it means to be a father. A father has a real love for his children no
matter how they may respond to him. A
father’s deepest desire is for his children to know and experience his
love. He desires the well-being of his
children and teaches them how to love others by his example. A father must at times correct, admonish and
warn his children for protection’s sake. A father always speaks the truth with love,
even when it is difficult. Christian
fathers, in particular, must know how to teach their children to receive God’s
love in prayer and to taste and see God at work in everyday life. Ultimately, when examined closely, we acknowledge that the fullness of fatherly
love is the complete surrender that a man makes of himself for his children.
We recognize these qualities in the
life of Jesus in his preaching, in his teaching, in his healing and deliverance
ministry, and especially in his loving relationship with his closest disciples,
the apostles. He speaks of his love for
his apostles when he says "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved
you, abide in my love." He calls
them friends. He corrects them when he
overhears them arguing over who is the greatest. In order to remain faithful to the Father’s
ways, Jesus strongly rebukes Peter with the words, "Get behind me Satan."
He prays for Peter personally as well as
for the well-being of all the apostles and those who will believe in him in the
future. Jesus teaches his disciples to
pray, calling God “Father”, and teaches them by his example to go off in quiet
prayer. Jesus promises the Advocate who
will instruct the apostles in all matters and keep them in the truth.
Since Christ is the “image of the
invisible God”, we can see in him and by his example, the fullness of the
Father’s love for us. Truly, the giving
of his Son is the fullest surrender of himself that God the Father could make
for us. The fact that this surrender
continues to happen each and every day—each and every hour—on countless altars
throughout the world, is evidence of the Father's unfathomable love for us. Thus, in celebrating the real and enduring presence
of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, what we are celebrating is the real and
enduring Love of the Father poured out for us.
Fatherhood, therefore, is fully
realized when a father surrenders himself fully and continually for his
children. In other words, just as the
outpouring of God the Father’s love for us is real and enduring, so the
outpouring of a father’s love for his children must be both real and
enduring. While I could name for you a
number of saints who demonstrated this fatherly virtue heroically, I’d like to
introduce you to a great example who has not yet been nominated for sainthood,
instead. He is Karol Josef Wojtila, senior: Saint John Paul II’s father.
The elder Karol was a retired soldier
from the Polish army and a tailor. He was
widowed when young Karol, his son, was the age of nine. He had already lost one daughter in infancy
and later would suffer the loss of his eldest son, Edmund. He was an upright man and a man of deep
piety. As an example, Saint John Paul II
would recall that, after the death of his mother, his father took him into his
parish church and led him to the image of Mary, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and
said to him: “She is your mother now.”
While other men may have gotten lost
in their grief and become distant from their family, Karol senior remained
engaged in the lives of his sons. He
made his young son’s clothes himself, he did the cooking and cleaning, and he encouraged
his sons in their friendships, their studies and their sports. Above all, and especially for Karol junior,
Karol senior formed his son’s early faith. The Pope, himself, describes this best. He wrote: “My father [was] a deeply religious
man. Day after day I was able to observe
the austere way in which he lived. By
profession he was a soldier and, after my mother's death, his life became one
of constant prayer. Sometimes I would
wake up during the night and find my father on his knees, just as I would
always see him kneeling in the parish church.”
This real and enduring outpouring of love for his children had a deep and
enduring impact on a man whose real and enduring outpouring of love would have
a deep and enduring impact on the world.
My brothers and sisters, the example
of Karol Wojtyla senior shows us that being a father is about generating
life. This generation of life doesn’t
end, however, after the conception of a child.
Rather, it must continue throughout the child’s life. In other words, every father must make a real
and enduring outpouring of his life so that his children may grow into
life. Logic tells us, of course, that
one cannot give something that one does not have and so the question arises: “How
can a father be continually filled with life so that he can continually pour
out his life for his children?” The
answer is in our Gospel reading today.
There Jesus says: “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life
because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because
of me.” The answer, in other words, is
the Eucharist. Therefore, fathers, it
behooves you to approach this altar frequently—even daily, if possible—because by
receiving the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist you receive
Life, himself, and thus are filled with life so that you can pour yourself out
for your children.
And so, my friends, as we celebrate
this wonderful gift that has been given to us—the real and enduring presence of
Jesus: Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist—and as we recognize and
honor the fathers among us, let us give thanks to God the Father in heaven for
this amazing gift of his love and let us pray for the fathers among us that,
strengthened by this Holy Sacrament, they might continually generate life in
their children, like Karol Wojtyla senior did, and thus produce an abundant
harvest of life for the world. Saint
Joseph, patron of fathers, pray for us!
Given
at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – June 18th, 2017
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