This is a special day for us as a
parish. We are very thankful to have the
opportunity to celebrate the Year of Faith today as a specially designated
pilgrimage church in the Diocese of Jackson.
And what luck that this first pilgrimage date is only a few days after
the feast day of our parish’s beloved patron saint – St James the Greater. And we are beginning to celebrate the 100
year anniversary of our parish here in Tupelo.
What a wonderful weekend celebration we are having!
Today’s Gospel reading is all about
prayer. Again and again, the disciples see Jesus at prayer in the Gospel of
Luke. The disciples want to know how to pray and they want to know what Jesus’
prayers are all about. We hear Jesus
tell us to be persistent in our prayers: ask and you will receive; seek and you
will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. But, in a lot of ways, what Jesus teaches us
today about prayer is not really about what we can get from God, but rather
about fostering and nurturing our relationship with Him.
I know that many of you know a lot of St
James. We have been sharing a lot of
stories about James during the Year of Faith.
After Christ’s death and resurrection, James went out from Jerusalem to
bring the Good News to the world, spending a lot of time in Spain. On this missionary journey, James and his
group of friends made it to northern Spain along the Erba River near Zaragoza. Mary knew that James’ mission was important
and that it was not going very well.
James was not making many converts to the faith. Mary prayed to her Son that James’ mission would
succeed. Jesus sent an appearance of the
Virgin Mary to the location where James and his friends were as a sign of
encouragement and hope. James and the others all kneeled as they saw Mary
appear to them, as she was carried by the angels and seated on a throne. Mary told them that she was appearing to help
them in their missionary efforts. She
not only asked them to build a chapel on this site, but she also took from the
hands of one of the angels a pillar of jasper containing a small wooden statue
of herself as an enduring symbol of her presence with them. The apparition of Mary faded, but the pillar
remains to this day – it is known as Our Lady of the Pillar and it is housed in
the Basilica-Cathedral in the city of Zaragoza.
We think of how James probably felt
frustrated and impatient with his lack of progress in his missionary efforts. Spain did eventually become a very strong
Catholic country; perhaps the seeds that James sowed are partially responsible
for the faith of the people there. We
also can get frustrated and impatient on our own journey. I imagine that James sometimes didn’t know
what questions to ask the Lord in his prayers, he did not know where to knock
or where to seek. We can be the same way
in our own journey of faith. Sometimes
we don’t know where to turn in our prayers.
Sometimes we don’t know what door we need to open. James has been here with this community for
almost 100 years, even when there were no priests to celebrate the mass each
week, when the Benedictine Fathers from Alabama were coming to northeast
Mississippi to serve the Catholic community here.
There are many different ways to
communicate to the Lord in prayer. My
good friend Sister Paulinus, a Sister of Mercy who has served in our diocese
for many years, says that if we do two things in prayer, that is what matters
most. If we say, “Help me, Lord, help
me, Lord!” and if we say “Thank you, Lord, thank you Lord!” The Dominican theologian and mystic Meister
Eckhart echoes this same sentiment – ““If the only prayer you ever say is
‘thank you,’ that will be enough.”
Let us give thanks for St James the
Greater, for the witness of faith and protection he gives to our parish
community. Let us give thanks for our
Catholic faith that we are celebrating in a special way during the Year of
Faith. I give thanks for all of you, for
the many ways you live out your faith, and for the many ways you contribute to
our vibrant and loving faith community.
Ten years ago this week, I was in Spain right after my first pilgrimage
of walking the Way of St James in Spain.
I was not even a priest yet.
Little did I know that I would be the pastor one day in this wonderful
parish named after St James in Tupelo, Mississippi. I give thanks to the Lord for our
parish. The Lord works in mysterious and
wonderful ways, doesn’t he?
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