7/19/2015 – 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Mark 6:7-13, Mark 6:30-34

     Last Sunday, our Gospel reading was from the sixth chapter of Mark, about how Jesus sent his disciples out two by two to bring his Good News to the world, giving them the authority to anoint the sick with oil and to cast out demons. One can imagine that this was a very intense, exciting and sometimes frightening experience for the disciples.  Today’s Gospel takes place later on in this same chapter of Mark’s Gospel after the disciples have returned, as they share stories with Jesus about what happened on their missionary journey.  Even though Jesus knew that he and his disciples needed some time to rest and relax, that time of renewal didn’t come to fruition due to the tenacious crowds that followed him.  But, rather than trying to flee again, Jesus feels compassion for the crowds that are looking for a shepherd to lead them, so he begins to teach them many things.

     As we hear a lot about the importance of having a shepherd to lead us and guide us in our lives of faith, I come to you today from the Diocese of Jackson down in the state of Mississippi, to talk about our experiences as a mission diocese in our own country.  When you think of Mississippi you probably think of the Bible Belt, which a correct assessment of the reality of our state. Even though we have the largest geographic area of any diocese in the US East of the Mississippi River – as our diocese covers 65 of the 82 counties in our state - we have the lowest percentage of Catholic of any diocese in our country – only about 2.3%. I am currently the pastor of St James Catholic Church in Tupelo, Mississippi – located in the Northeast part of the state.  You may have heard of the city of Tupelo – it’s claim to fame is being the birthplace of Elvis Presley. I have four masses in our parish every weekend – 3 in English and 1 in Spanish.  I also help out in some of the neighboring parishes that do not have a resident priest.  I often travel 100 miles round-trip to celebrate mass in Spanish at one of parishes in our area on Sundays.  Mississippi is a very rural state, with the population spread out amongst a lot of sparsely populated areas. Some counties in Mississippi don’t have a Catholic Church, so we have parishioners who travel great distances in order to come to mass and religious education classes.  My own reality is also affected by the vastness of our rural diocese.  I am the dean of our deanery in Northeast Mississippi, and thus have to travel to our chancery office fairly often for different meetings and events.  For me, it takes more than 3½ hours to get there by car to get to Jackson, traveling a distance of about 190 miles each way. 

       You can probably guess that by my first name being Lincoln, I am not a native Mississippian.  I was born in Chicago and became a priest in Mississippi with the desire to serve the people of God as in missionary in my own country.  I had previously been a missionary to the native people of Canada and in a rain forest jungle in the country of Ecuador.  My experiences as a missionary there have helped me a lot serving in our missionary diocese.  We have a lot of help from religious orders to supply priests to our priests – Society of the Divine Word, the Sacred Heart Fathers, the Redemptorists, the Franciscans and the Trinitarians to name some of them.  Many of our diocesan priests are missionaries who came over from Ireland, but since the youngest Irish priest in our Diocese is well into his 60s, that tradition will soon come to an end. 

      When we think of missionaries, we probably think of going off to a faraway land, to a culture so different from ours.  And being missionaries in other lands in part of our mandate of spreading the Gospel throughout the world.  But as we heard in Mark’s Gospel about Jesus’ disciples bringing the Good News to the people of their own land – to the people of Ancient Israel – we are called to this same mission in our world as well.  In recent years, our Church has challenged us to bring a new evangelization to our community and to the world, to see ourselves as not just maintaining the status quo in our faith, but rather being disciples who proclaim that faith and who serve as witnesses and leaven and servants in our world.  I always enjoy going out to different parishes in our country to talk about what our reality is like as Catholics in Mississippi and share a sense of solidarity and mission together.  The second collection today is to help our mission diocese of Jackson, and I thank your parish and Father Bob for welcoming us here today to share our experiences with you.  Most importantly, we thank you for your prayers and witness, in living out your faith as disciples in the modern world.