10 May 2020 - fifth Sunday of Easter - Acts 6:1-7

      Today, we celebrate the 5^th Sunday of the Easter season.  During the Easter Season, most of the first readings we hear in both the daily and Sunday masses are from the Acts of the Apostles.  These readings explain how the Early Church developed and grew.   Most Catholics remember that the Second Vatican Council called us to modernize the Church and to read the signs of the times as we interact and dialogue with the modern world in which we live, but we often forget that it also called us back to the teachings and traditions of the Early Church, to the faith that was passed down to us by the apostles and those first believers.

      Our reading from Acts today tells us how this early community of believers grew, how these first Christians responded to the reality around them when they realized that the widows of the community needed their help. They choose 7 of the members to serve in this outreach ministry in their faith community. God always meets us in our reality – that is one of the things I as a priest always tell my parishioners.  We live out our faith in the reality of the world, and sometimes that really is complicated. We know that our reality is very complex right now.  We really don’t know what is going to hit us from day to day, do we? This past week, we commemorated the anniversary of the tornado the hit my parish of St James in Tupelo back in 2014.  I can remember that day so vividly.  There was so much damage to our parish.  For months we were clearing debris and fallen trees from our property.  It seemed like the clean-up and recovery would never end.  I couldn’t even get back into my rectory for more than a week.  I remember how that unanticipated event changed my reality and the reality of my parish so much, and so much we did had to respond to that reality.  

      In a reflection on the Early Church depicted in the Acts of the Apostles, Pope Francis stated that each individual Christian cannot understand himself as a believer in the faith apart from the community of believers, that we are so intrinsically connected to that community.  Just as we cannot understand a Christian detached and isolated from his community, we cannot understand Jesus by himself either, because he did not fall out of the sky like a superhero, according to Pope Francis, who certainly has a way with words and imagery.  Jesus walked the earth as a human being and as the Son of God with the people of Ancient Israel.  Jesus is a intrinsic part of our human history.  Just as we have been hearing about the history of the Early Church in the Acts of the Apostles, I have been thinking about our history here in the state of Mississippi, including our Catholic history here in our Diocese.  Learning about those from Lebanon, Italy, and Louisiana who brought their Catholic faith to Mississippi in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, the priests who came over from Ireland, about the history of the Civil War battlefields, about the influence of the Mississippi River and Blues music, and the great Mississippi authors such as Walker Percy, William Faulkner, and Eudora Welty – all this has been incredibly interesting for me. One of my favorite Ole Miss professors, Dr. Andy Mullins told us a quote from William Faulkner as we were sent out to teach high school in the Mississippi Delta: “To understand the world, you must understand a place like Mississippi.” What a great quote that says so much.  

      As we think of the readings about the Early Church that we hear each Easter season, we are called to realize that the history of our Early Church is a part of us – it has shaped and molded our faith and our modern Church. It helps us understand where we came from and where we are going.  It helps us understand and approach the complicated reality we face in our lives. So as we hear about these stories about the Early Church, as we hear about how those apostles very compassionately and pragmatically responded to the needs around them out of the values of their faith, let us all take heart as we recognize our own history and respond to our own realty and the reality of the world around us.  Let us feel the communion and fellowship that we have together as disciples of Christ.  What we are going through in this pandemic will be a part of our history, both for ourselves and future generations.  And how we respond in our faith will become part of our history as well.