This weekend, I am off again on my travels out of town - this time to Our Lady of Hope in Rosemont, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, for a mission appeal for our Diocese. This is the homily I am going to be giving at the Masses this upcoming weekend.
We have been hearing Gospel readings these past four weeks from the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, a chapter that help us better understand the Eucharist that we share together each Sunday around the Lord’s table. Jesus tells us that if we eat his flesh and drink his blood as the true food and the true drink, we will remain in him and he will remain in us. The crowds struggled to understand the true significance of these words. For us as well, as modern disciples of Christ, maybe we can understand these statements to some extent, but in some sense this will still remain a mystery of our faith. Mystery is always a part of the way we celebrate our liturgies and the way we see God. Since it is still difficult for us to comprehend the mysteries of the Eucharist as modern followers of Christ, imagine how shocking these statements were to those in ancient Israel who heard Jesus proclaim them for the first time.
The Eucharist and our identity as Catholics unite us as the Body of Christ here on earth. In that spirit of unity, in the missionary spirit of our Church, I come to you today as a priest from a missionary diocese in our country - the Diocese of Jackson in the state of Mississippi. You probably have an image of Mississippi in your mind - the Deep South, the Bible Belt, a very rural, agricultural state - and that image is true. The Diocese of Jackson is a very large Diocese geographically, taking up most of the state, all except the cluster of counties along the Gulf Coast, which is the Diocese of Biloxi. In fact, our Diocese is the largest geographically in the US East of the Mississippi River. Even though we’re large geographically, our Diocese has the lowest percentage of Catholics in any Diocese in the US, about 2.3%. There were priests in 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 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 that.
I have been a Diocese priest for 10 1/2 years. My first assignment as pastor was in the communities of Yazoo City and Belzoni in the Mississippi Delta, the cotton growing region 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. For this past year, I’ve been serving as the pastor of St Jude Catholic Church in the town of Pearl. 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, our state capital.
You can probably tell from my accent that I am not originally from Mississippi myself. Chicago is actually my hometown - I come from the West Rogers Park, right near Indian Boundary Park. My family moved away from the area when I was 12 and resettled in California, but Chicago will always be my hometown. My brother lives right near here - he teaches in a middle school in Des Plaines. As a young adult, as 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, where every pastor they have had has been 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.
I recall how two years ago, in August of 2016, I was staying with family friends in Indianapolis, trying to rest and recuperate from a bout of pneumonia. I received a text from a good friend back in Mississippi, telling me that CNN had just reported 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 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 as I was preparing for my trip up here to Indianapolis, as they represent the missionary spirit of our Diocese, of bringing the Gospel and the love of Christ to the people of Mississippi, through humble hearts and humble service.
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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