St Teresa of Avila, a Carmelite nun who lived in Spain in the 16th century, a renowned mystic and Church reformer, is one of my favorite saints. Because this was the time of the Spanish Inquisition and right after the Reformation, Teresa efforts at reform often were not well received by her community, to bring them back to their humble origins and spiritual practices. One evening, Teresa was thrown out of her convent in the middle of a stormy night dressed only in her religious habit. As she was leaving, riding on a donkey cart, they hit a ditch, with Teresa being thrown into the mud. Teresa sat up in the mud, looked up into the stormy sky and shouted to God in her anger and frustration: “Lord, if this is the way you treat your friends, it is no wonder why you don’t have many. But as frustrating as her work could be, she clung to her faith, she stuck to her efforts in reforming the Carmelites to which God called her. Today, Teresa of Avila is one of our most beloved saints, one of the first female Doctors of the Church, one of our Church’s great teachers and theologians.
Jeremiah faced opposition to his prophetic ministry. And Jesus and his disciples faced a lot of opposition in their proclamation of God’s kingdom. As Jesus prepares his disciples for the hostility and rejection they would face, he told them to trust and not to fear. That is good advice for us of us to remember as we live out of faith and preach Christ’s Good News in the modern world. As was mentioned at the beginning of mass, my name is Father Lincoln Dall. I am a Diocesan priest from the Diocese of Jackson, mission territory in our own country. You probably picture Mississippi as being in the heart of the Bible belt of our country, which is true. Our Diocese of Jackson is very large geographically, taking up most of the state, all except that cluster of counties around the Gulf Coast, which comprise the Diocese of Biloxi. Our Diocese is the largest geographically in the United States East of the Mississippi River. However, even though we are so large geographically, our Diocese has the lowest percentage of Catholics in any Diocese in the United States, estimated to be about 2.3%. There were priests in the state of Mississippi during the time of the Spanish explorers, until the time that the Spanish settlements were disbanded in the territory of Mississippi. Our Diocese was established in 1837 by Pope Gregory XVI. Currently we have about 100 parishes and missions, but most of those churches are rather small, reflecting the rural nature of our state.
I have been a Diocese priest for 9 years now. My first assignment as pastor in the communities of Yazoo City and Belzoni in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, the cotton growing region that is formed along the Mississippi River. While stationed in the Delta, I served 3 parishes and two prisons. I remember telling a priest in California that the territory I served in the Delta encompassed about 1,400 square miles, his jaw just about fell on the floor. However, in those two counties, only about 37,000 people resided.
For the past 3 1/2 years, I have been serving in the city of Tupelo in NE Mississippi. The parish where I am pastor, St James the Greater, is more than 100 years old. For many years, the parish had been served by priests from a Benedictine monastery in Culman, Alabama, several hours away. Tupelo had been a very small Catholic community throughout most of its history. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, many Catholics moved down from the Midwest for jobs, from places like Illinois, Michigan, and Missouri. In the past 10 years, we’ve had an influx of first generation Americans from places like Mexico, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
You can probably tell from my accent that I am not originally from Mississippi myself. I grew up in Chicago and Los Angeles. After serving as a missionary in Canada and South America for 7 years, I felt God calling me to be a missionary in my own land. For more than a century, the majority of our priests in Mississippi came from Ireland. There are also a lot of priests from different parts of the US who like me felt the call to be of service in the missionary territories of our own country. We have different priests and brothers from religious orders serving in our Diocese - the Redemptorists, the Society of the Divine Word, the Trinitarians, the Norbertines, and the Christian Brothers. Recently, we’ve had a lot of priests arrive from India to help out in our parishes.
I want to thank all of you for the opportunity to share with you our experiences in the Diocese of Jackson. We are all brothers and sisters in Christ and it is important for us to be in solidarity together in proclaiming God’s kingdom here on earth. Thank you for your prayers and your support.
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