It is about a year ago, in August of 2016, when I was staying with family friends here in Indianapolis, trying to rest and recuperate from a bout of pneumonia. I received a text from a good friend from where I lived in Mississippi, asking me if I had heard that CNN was reporting that two sisters who worked in my Diocese had been killed. Sister Margaret Held of the School Sisters of St Francis from Milwaukee and Sister Paula Merrill of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky, had run a medical clinic in Holmes County in central Mississippi, one of the poorest counties in our entire country. They were very beloved members of our Diocese and of the community where they served - all of us were so shocked when we heard that they had been murdered. Going to their memorial service at the Cathedral in Jackson the next week with all my fellow priests was a very emotional experience. I thought of these two wonderful ladies and their witness of faith to the community and to the universal Church when I read over the readings for today’s mass. I also thought of the words by the 17th century English poet John Donne: “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” In different ways, our readings tell us today that our relationship with the Church and our relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ are to have a real impact in our lives. Jesus tells us in the Gospel today that when two or three are gathered together in his name, he is in the midst of us. As members of the Body of Christ, we are to help our brothers and sisters in the process of fraternal correction, forgiveness, and reconciliation, not an easy task to do.
As we hear this theme of being members of this universal Body of Christ, and the responsibilities that go along with it, I come to you today from missionary territory right here in the United States, the Diocese of Jackson in the state of Mississippi. Usually, when you receive a visit from a visiting priest doing mission work in our Church, you probably expect someone ministering in another country, such as Asia or Africa or Latin America. But we also have mission territory right here in our own country.
You probably picture Mississippi as being in the heart of the Bible belt in our country, which is definitely true. We have a large Diocese geographically, taking up most of the state, all except that cluster of counties around the Gulf Coast. In fact, our Diocese is the largest geographically in the United States East of the Mississippi River. 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 conquistadors and explorers, up 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 around 100 parishes and missions, but most of those churches are rather small, reflecting the rural nature of our state. Most counties in our Diocese only have only one parish, and some don’t have even one.
I have been a Diocese priest for 9 1/2 years. 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, there was only about 37,000 people. While I was serving there, one of those counties, Humpheys county, was reported to have the highest child poverty and the lowest median family income of any county in the entire United States. Since August 1, I have been serving as the pastor of St Jude Catholic Church in the city of Pearl in central Mississippi in Rankin County. I would describe it as a working class parish in a very rural county, even though it is not far from the city of Jackson.
You can probably tell from my accent that I am not originally from Mississippi myself. I was born in Chicago - in the Northside neighborhood of Rogers Park. As a young adult, I served as a lay missionary in Canada and South America for 7 years, I felt God calling me to be a missionary in my own land. This drew me to a state of Mississippi. For more than a century, the majority of our priests in Mississippi came from Ireland. In fact, I know of one parish in our Diocese in the city of Vicksburg that predates that Civil War, that has never had a pastor that was not born in 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 from religious orders serving in our Diocese - the Redemptorists, the Society of the Divine Word, the Trinitarians, the Norbertines, and the Christian brothers to name some of these congregations. Recently, we’ve had a lot of priests arrive from India to help man 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment