We
are already in the 5th 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 – I always enjoy hearing the
account in those readings of 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. However, many of us forget that the Second Vatican Council 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 the Early Church fathers and mothers.
Our
reading from the Acts of the Apostles 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. I
look at the reality many of us are facing here in Tupelo, in trying to recover
from the tornado, in cleaning the debris away and trying to repair the damage
to our homes, to cope with the trauma and stress we have been going through. In
the midst of our reality, life does not stop. In
the past couple of days, I had two funerals.
One was for a baby who was still-born to a member of the Hispanic
community in New Albany. You can only
begin to imagine the pain and sorrow this family was going through. The second
funeral was for a resident at Traceway – Irene Chambers – a 96 year-old lady
who was a very devout Catholic, true to her French Canadian roots. She lived a very full, devoted life, very
strong in her faith, and was clutching the rosary in her hands when she passed
away. Those were two different funerals,
two very different realities for those two families. This weekend, we also joyfully celebrated the
graduation of some of our parishioners from high school and college, we
celebrated baptisms and blessed a new home as well. In the grieving of recovering from a tornado
and of saying goodbye to loved ones, as a community, we celebrate joyful
milestones in our lives as well.
Just
a few days ago, Pope Francis, in preaching on the history of the Early Church
recounted in the Acts of Apostles, noted that we cannot understand ourselves as
Christians outside of the people of God. 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 part of our
human history. Just
as we have been hearing about the history of the Early Church in the Acts of
the Apostles, in one of my homilies at a daily mass, I was reflecting upon our
own history here in the state of Mississippi. Learning about those from Lebanon, Italy, and Louisiana who brought their
Catholic faith to Mississippi in the late 19th and early 20th
century, about the history of the Civil War battlefields, and about the
influence of the Mississippi River, 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 I
came to Tupelo, I learned about this history of our faith community here – the
Benedictine priests who traveled here from Alabama to celebrate mass, the
different families who settled on Barrett Ridge, and then the many Catholics
who settled here from the Midwest with their jobs. 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 the history of our faith in the Acts of the Apostles, 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.
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