Who do people say that I am? Who do YOU say that I am? What do you believe in your life of faith? This gets to the heart of the questions that Jesus asks his followers today.
When we see Jesus in today’s Gospel, he’s in the midst of his ministry here on earth. Jesus and his disciples are going all over the countryside proclaiming the kingdom of God. In our Gospel readings in recent weeks, we’ve seen Jesus speak to great crowds, performing the miracle of multiplying the loaves and the fish. People have come to him for healing and change in their lives. At this point, Jesus is wondering what the people have learned, how they perceive him. So he asks the disciples: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
As we hear this wonderful Gospel about Christ’s identity and our identity as his disciples, I come to you as your brother in our Catholic faith. My name is Father Lincoln Dall from the missionary Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi. I come to you to share stories of faith from our missionary Diocese. We might think of the missions as existing in faraway lands, but we also have mission territory right here in our country. The Diocese of Jackson is located in the deep South between the states of Louisiana and Alabama. While it has been exceptionally hot this summer in a lot of the country, it is very hot and humid a lot of the year in Mississippi. We are the largest Diocese in the eastern part of the United State in territory, but we also have the smallest percentage of Catholics of any Diocese in our country, at about 2.3%. Our Diocese has 65 counties in the state of Mississippi. Some counties have only one parish, and some counties have no parish at all.
I have been a priest for 15 year in the Diocese of Jackson. My first assignment as pastor was in the Mississippi Delta, the region of rich farmland that hugs the Mississippi River where a lot of cotton is grown. I was pastor of three parishes and chaplain of two prisons located in Yazoo and Humphreys counties. My territory covered about 1,400 squares miles, but had only a total of 37,000 inhabitants. To put this in perspective, the whole state of Rhode Island and the whole Diocese of Providence is of a similar size. From where I lived in Yazoo City to Belzoni, it was about 25 miles, between which were no towns and not even a gas station, but only farmland, swamps, and bayous. While serving the Catholics of Humphreys county as their pastor, that county had the highest child poverty rate and lowest median family income of any county in the US.
I currently serve as pastor in two parishes located in the towns of Raymond and Clinton, just outside the City of Jackson. I am have also been the vicar general of the Diocese for the last four years. In addition, I am very active in prison ministry in the Diocese, serving as chaplain in two prisons.
You may have been expecting me to have a strong Southern drawl. However, from my accent, you can tell that I am not originally from Mississippi. I was born in Chicago and grew up as a teenager in Santa Ana in southern California. I started my career as an accountant, but felt God calling me to missionary work. I became a lay missionary, serving in Canada for three years, working in a soup kitchen and with the indigenous people there, and also for three years and in Ecuador, working in a mission site in a large rain forest jungle.
I spoke about serving as pastor in Yazoo City. There is someone from Yazoo City, Mississippi who one day could become a saint. Her name is Sister Thea Bowman. Born in Yazoo City in 1937 to an African American family, her father was a doctor and her mother an educator. Even though they were not Catholic, her parents felt that their daughter would receive the best education possible at the Catholic school run by nuns. Thea decided to become Catholic as a girl and at the age of 15, decided to become a nun herself. She joined the Franciscan sisters of perpetual adoration, the order of sisters that taught at her school. She taught English on the elementary school and college level. She became a great evangelizer in the Catholic faith, reaching out to people of different races and cultures. She also was an accomplished singer and musician, being one of the editors of the African American Catholic hymnal. She came back to our Diocese in the 1980s, serving in the office of intercultural ministry. She died in 1990 at the age of 52. I mention Sister Thea Bowman because her joyful spirit and her creative approach to ministry represents the missionary spirit of our Diocese.
We indeed have a diverse Catholic population in the Diocese of Jackson, with many Asian and Hispanic Catholics and a good number of historically African American churches.
We will be taking up a collection for the Diocese of Jackson today at mass. We appreciate any help you can give us. These mission funds we collect go to help our Catholic schools and the small parishes in the rural areas of our Diocese. I mentioned my prison ministry; some of these funds have helped expand our prison ministry and to purchase Bibles, catechisms, and rosaries for them. Some weeks we visit more than 200 prisoners. I have forming the prisoners to see themselves as Eucharistic ministers and to evangelize the other inmates in the prison; this project has seen great success. Another example of the use of our funds is the purchase of a copy machine for a small African American parish in the Mississippi Delta in the town of Indianola when the current copy machine stopped working.
I am so glad I was able to visit your parish this weekend. As Catholics, it is important for us to have unity and solidarity, to share in the Body and Blood of Christ around the altar, and to share our experiences and stories with each other. Thank you for any help you can give us. Be assured I will pray for all of you and for your parish community. I ask for your prayers for our missionary Diocese as well.
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