Category Archives: Columnists

Ancient tradition lends strength to modern advocacy

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Millennial reflections

 

Father Jeremy Tobin

By Father Jeremy Tobin, O. Praem
Before every general chapter of the Norbertine Order there is a fraternal visitation by the head of our order to all the houses throughout the world. The Priory of St. Moses the Black and its motherhouse, St. Norbert Abbey in De Pere Wisconsin, will have completed the visitation before the next General Chapter at Rolduc in the Netherlands in 2018. Here, at the Priory, at the opening address of his visit here, Abbot General Thomas quoted Pope Francis saying that religious must be prophetic. They must be the prophetic voice of the church, and speak out for those who have no voice. Pope Francis has said that being prophetic can be messy, but urged us to be courageous.
Religious by their nature are the prophetic dimension of the Church. Looking at the lives of various founders of religious communities you find them responding to a call to do something new, to meet situations that demand attention. Pope Francis tells us to go to the margins, reach out to the peripheries. Go where the need is. Be with the suffering, the poor, the scapegoated.
Look at Jesus in the Gospels. His friends were the marginalized, the outcast, the labeled. For that he was condemned. Down the centuries that is what religious do. Whether priests, brothers or sisters, their character comes from the charism of their community. How they respond to current situations is largely within the frame of their community’s charism. The ancient orders often are more flexible because they have survived so much. Their charisms are more generic leaving the possibility open to respond to any need the times call them to meet.
I begin with this to say that my community, the Norbertines, has begun celebrating more than nine centuries of existence. We were just a little more than a hundred years old when we faced and survived the Mongol invasions of Europe. Places we built our monasteries ended up in two countries when borders were drawn. We have survived a lot since then, but continue to respond to the needs of the times.
Since the Second Vatican Council we have responded in many ways to issues of social justice. One our priests in Wisconsin helped found the American Indian Movement (AIM) that still works for human rights for native Americans.
In Peru we confronted massive poverty and lack of health care by establishing mini parishes in Lima and a string of clinics, that still operate on the Rio Napo, a tributary of the Amazon. We came to Mississippi to respond to the spiritual and material needs of African Americans. We are still involved at Christ the King on in South Jackson. Our local founder retired from a career at Jackson State University. Another one is involved in advocacy and writing about human rights and promoting fair and just legislation.
Pope Francis has reawakened the original spirit of Vatican II when he described the Church as a field hospital, a MASH unit that meets the people where they are, in whatever shape, and responds with mercy and compassion and a listening ear. The people with no voice need a voice and we are that voice. We collaborate with our fellow Christians, whatever denomination, addressing issues of inequality and justice. Pope Francis is asking religious to push the barriers further to speak out for issues that confront the world. He has given us a new image of what it is to evangelize, to bring good news, not bad news, to the poor. He calls us to address climate change head on. It isn’t that we don’t have issues to address, they are all around us.
Religious, by our vocation, are called to take risks, to say what must be said, to speak truth to power. That is what prophecy is. It is conveying the vision of justice and mercy welling up inside to bring hope to those who have little hope. It is taking risks.
Even ancient, monastic orders like mine are called to go out and be with the people who need to hear the good news of the Gospel, of deliverance and hope. Some need to take greater risks and follow their call. In these perilous times the poor and marginalized, the discriminated and oppressed need to hear the Gospel message of deliverance of redemption and of hope. Social justice is at the heart of the Gospel and we must bring that message home.
(Father Jeremy Tobin, O.Praem, lives at the Priory of St. Moses the Black, Raymond.)

Plea for the soul

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IN EXILE

Father Ron Rolheiser

By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
It’s hard to find your soulmate in someone who doesn’t believe you have a soul.
Recently on “The Moth Radio Hour” a young woman shared the story of her breakup with her boyfriend, a young man for whom she had deep feelings. The problem was that she, a person with a deep faith, a Mormon, struggled with the radical materialism of her boyfriend. For him, there were no souls; the physical world was real, and nothing else. She kept asking him if he believed he had a soul. He couldn’t make himself believe that. Eventually, not without a lot of heartache, they broke up. Why? In her words: It’s hard to find your soulmate in someone who doesn’t believe you have a soul.
Her frustration is becoming more universal. More and more our world is ignoring and denying the existence of soul, becoming soulless. It wasn’t always like this. Up until modern times, often it was the physical and the body that weren’t properly honored. But things have changed, radically.
It began with Darwin, who rooted our origins more in the history of our bodies than in the origins of our souls; it took more shape in the mechanistic philosophies of the last century, which understood both our universe and ourselves as physical machines; it became more firm as modern medicine and experimental psychology began more and more to explain the brain primarily in terms of carbon complexification and biochemical interactions; it seeped into our higher educational systems as we produced more and more technical schools rather than universities in the deeper sense; and it culminated in popular culture where love and sex are spoken of more in terms of chemistry than in terms of soul. It is not surprising that for most pop singers today the mantra is: I want your body! I want your body! We’re a long ways from Shakespeare’s marriage of true minds and Yeats’ love of the pilgrim soul in you.
Religion of course has always lodged its protests against this but often its understanding of the soul was itself too narrow to have much power to lure a materialistic culture back into wanting to rediscover and listen to the soul. Ironically, it took a non-religious figure, Carl Jung, to speak of soul again in a way that is intellectually intriguing. And it was in the sick, the insane, the suicidal and others whose lives were broken that Jung began to hear the cry of the soul (whose demands are sometimes very different from those of the body and whose needs are for much more than simple comfort and the prolonging of life).
Much of Jung’s teaching and that of his followers can be seen as a protest for the soul. We see this, for example, in the writing of James Hillman. It’s ironic that as an agnostic he was able to speak about the soul in ways that we, who are religious, might envy and emulate. Like Jung, he also drew many of his insights from listening to the soul cry out its meaning and pain through the voices of the sick, the insane, the broken, and the suicidal. Religion, medicine and psychology, he believes, are not hearing the soul’s cry. They’re forever trying to fix the soul, cure the soul or save the soul, rather than listening to the soul, which wants and needs neither to be fixed nor saved. It’s already eternal. The soul needs to be heard, and heard in all its godly goodness and earthy complexes. And sometimes what it tells us goes against all common sense, medical practice and the over-simplistic spiritualities we often present as religion.
To be more in touch with our souls we might examine an older language, the language that religion, poets, mythologists, and lovers used before today’s dominant materialism turned our language about the soul into the language of chemistry and mechanism. We cannot understand the soul through any scientific description but only by looking at its behavior, its insatiability, its dissatisfactions, and its protests. A soul isn’t explained, it’s experienced, and soul experience always comes soaked in depth, in longing, in eros, in limit, in the feeling of being pilgrim in need of a soulmate.
Happily, even today, we still do spontaneously connect the soul to things beyond chemistry and mechanism. As Hillman points out: “We associate the word ‘soul’ with: mind, spirit, heart, life, warmth, humanness, personality, individuality, intentionality, essence, innermost, purpose, emotion, quality, virtue, morality, sin, wisdom, death, God. As well, we speak of a soul as ‘troubled,’ ‘old,’ ‘disembodied,’ ‘immortal,’ ‘lost,’ ‘innocent,’ ‘inspired.’ Eyes are said to be ‘soulful,’ for the eyes are ‘the mirror of the soul;’ and one can be ‘soulless’ by showing no mercy.”
Soullessness: We understand the make-up of something best when we see it broken. So perhaps today we can best understand our soullessness in the growing acceptance of pornography and hook-up sex, where the soul is intentionally and necessarily excluded from what is meant to be the epitome of all soulful experience.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

Close the distance not the gate

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IN EXILE

Father Ron Rolheiser

By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Nobel-prizing winning author, Toni Morrison, assessing the times, asks this question: “Why should we want to know a stranger when it is easier to estrange another? Why should we want to close the distance when we can close the gate?” Except this isn’t a question, it’s a judgment.
It’s a negative judgment on both our society and our churches. Where are our hearts really at? Are we trying more to close the distance between us and what’s foreign or are we into closing gates to keep strangers estranged?
In fairness, it might be pointed out that this has always been a struggle. There hasn’t been a golden age within which people wholeheartedly welcomed the stranger. There have been golden individuals and even golden communities who were welcoming, but never society or church as a whole.
Much as this issue is so front and center in our politics today, as countries everywhere struggle with their immigration policies and with what to do with millions of refugees and migrants wanting to enter their country, I want to take Morrison’s challenge, to close the distance rather than close the gate, to our churches: Are we inviting in the stranger? Or, are we content to let the estranged remain outside?
There is a challenging motif within Jesus’ parable of the over-generous vineyard owner which can easily be missed because of the overall lesson within the story. It concerns the question that the vineyard owner asks the last group of workers, those who will work for only one hour. Unlike the first group, he doesn’t ask them: “Do you want to work in my vineyard?”
Rather he asks them: “Why aren’t you working?” Their answer: “Because no one has hired us!” Notice they don’t answer by saying that their non-employment is because they are lazy, incompetent or disinterested. Neither does the vineyard owner’s question imply that. They aren’t working simply because no one has given them the invitation to work!
Sadly, I believe this is the case for so many people who are seemingly cold or indifferent to religion and our churches. Nobody has invited them in! And that was true too at the time of Jesus. Whole groups of people were seen as being indifferent and hostile to religion and were deemed simply as sinners. This included prostitutes, tax collectors, foreigners and criminals. Jesus invited them in and many of them responded with a sincerity, contrition and devotion that shamed those who considered themselves true believers. For the so-called sinners, all that stood between them and entry into the kingdom was a genuine invitation.
Why aren’t you practicing a faith? No one has invited us! Just in my own, admittedly limited, pastoral experience, I have seen a number of individuals who from childhood to early or late mid-life were indifferent to and even somewhat paranoid about, religion and church. It was a world from which they had always felt excluded. But, thanks to some gracious person or fortunate circumstance, at a moment, they felt invited in and they gave themselves over to their new religious family with a disarming warmth, fervor and gratitude, often taking a fierce pride in their new identity.
Witnessing this several times, I now understand why the prostitutes and tax collectors, more than the church people at the time, believed in Jesus. He was the first religious person to truly invite them in.
Sadly, too, there’s a reverse side to this is where, all too often, in all religious sincerity, we not only don’t invite certain others in, we positively close the gates on them. We see that, for example, a number of times in the Gospels where those around Jesus block others from having access to him, as is the case in that rather colorful story where some people are trying to bring a paralytic to Jesus but are blocked by the crowds surrounding him and consequently have to make a hole in the roof in order to lower the paralytic into Jesus’ presence.
Too frequently, unknowingly, sincerely, but blindly, we are that crowd around Jesus, blocking access to him by our presence. This is an occupational danger especially for all of us who are in ministry.
We so easily, in all sincerity, in the name of Christ, in the name of orthodox theology and in the name of sound pastoral practice set ourselves up as gatekeepers, as guardians of our churches, through whom others must pass in order to have access to God. We need to more clearly remember that Christ is the gatekeeper and the only gatekeeper and we need to refresh ourselves on what that means by looking at why Jesus chased the moneychangers out of the temple in John’s Gospel. They, the moneychangers, had set themselves up as a medium through which people has to pass in order to offer workshop to God. Jesus would have none of it.
Our mission as disciples of Jesus is not to be gatekeepers. We need instead to work at closing the distance rather than closing the gate.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

What happens during Mass?

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(Editor’s note: Bishop Joseph Kopcaz’ travel schedule kept him from writing an article in time for this publication. He is working on an article, which will be posted to Mississippi Catholic’s website in the next few days. Bishop Kopacz will return to these pages in the next issue.)

Bishop Robert Barron

By Bishop Robert Barron
As many Catholics know, the Second Vatican Council famously referred to the liturgy as the “source and summit of the Christian life.” And following the prompts of the great figures of the liturgical movement in the first half of the twentieth century, the Council Fathers called for a fuller, more conscious, and more active participation in the liturgy on the part of Catholics.
That the Vatican II dream of a revived liturgical awareness and practice has, at least in the West, largely remained unrealized goes without saying. In the years following the Council, Mass attendance in Europe, North America, and Australia has plummeted. The numbers of Catholics who regularly attend Mass in those parts of the world hover between 10 and 25 percent Therefore, it is not surprising that an extraordinary number of those who self-identify as Catholics in the West have very little idea what the Mass actually is. My 31 years of priestly ministry convince me that, even for a great number of those who attend Mass, the liturgy is a kind of religiously-themed jamboree.
So what is the Mass? What happens during this paradigmatic prayer? Why is it the beginning and culmination of what it means to be a Christian? In the course of this brief article, I will share just a couple of basic insights.
First, the Mass is a privileged encounter with the living Christ. Christianity is not a philosophy, ideology, or religious program; it is a friendship with the Son of God, risen from the dead. There is simply no more intense union with Jesus than the Mass. Consider for a moment the two major divisions of the Mass: the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the Eucharist. When we meet with another person in a formal setting, we typically do two things. We get together and talk, and then we eat. Think of the first part of Mass as an exchange, a conversation, between the Son of God and members of his mystical body. In the prayers and interventions of the priest, and especially in the words of the Scriptures, Jesus speaks to his people, and in the songs, responses, and psalms, the people talk back. There is, if you will, a lovely call and response between the Lord and those who have been grafted onto him through baptism. In the course of this spirited conversation, the union between head and members is intensified, strengthened, confirmed. Having talked, we then sit down to eat, not an ordinary meal, but the banquet of the Lord’s body and blood, hosted by Jesus himself. The communion that commenced with the call and response during the first part of Mass is now brought to a point of unsurpassed intensity (at least this side of heaven), as the faithful come to eat the body and drink the lifeblood of Jesus.
A second rubric under which to consider the Mass is that of play. We tend quite naturally to think of play as something less than serious, something frivolous and far less important than work. But nothing could be further from the truth. Work is always subordinated to an end beyond itself; it is for the sake of a higher good. So I work on my car that I might drive it; I work at my place of employment that I might make money; I work around the house so that it might be a more pleasant place to live, etc. But play has no ulterior motive, no end to which it is subordinated. Hence, I play baseball or watch golf or attend a symphony or engage in philosophical speculation or get lost in a sprawling novel simply because it is good so to do. These activities are referred to in the classical tradition as “liberal,” precisely because they are free (liber) from utility. When I was teaching philosophy years ago in the seminary, I would gleefully tell my students that they were engaging in the most useless study of all. Invariably they laughed — revealing the utilitarian prejudice of our culture — but I always reminded them that this meant the highest and most noble kind of study.
The Mass, as an act of union with the highest good, is therefore the supreme instance of play. It is the most useless and hence sublimest activity in which one could possibly engage. Recently, I had the privilege of attending the Mass for the installation of new members of the Knights and Ladies of the Holy Sepulcher. For the solemn liturgy, the Knights wore dashing capes emblazoned with the Jerusalem cross and jaunty black berets, while the ladies donned elegant black gowns, gloves, and lace mantillas. Two bishops, in full Mass vestments and tall mitres, welcomed the new members into the order by dubbing them on both shoulders with impressively large swords. As I watched the proceedings, I couldn’t help but think of G.K. Chesterton’s remark that children often dress up when they engage in their “serious play.” Capes, hats, ceremonial gloves, vestments, and swords for dubbing are all perfectly useless, which is precisely their point. So all of the colorful accouterments and stately actions of the Mass are part of the sublime play.
Why is the Mass so important? Why is it the “source and summit” of the Christian life? I could say many more things in answer to these questions, but suffice it to say for the moment that it is the most beautiful encounter between friends and that it is an anticipation of the play that will be our permanent preoccupation in heaven.

(Bishop Robert Barron is the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries and Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He is also the host of CATHOLICISM, a groundbreaking, award-winning documentary about the Catholic Faith, which aired on PBS.)

Be not afraid: we’re in this together

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Sister Constance Veit

Guest Column
By Sister Constance Veit
A Each October we observe Respect Life Month in dioceses around the United States. This year’s theme is “Be Not Afraid,” but of what, or whom, are we supposed to not be afraid?
Pondering this question, I recalled an experience I had while attending the Convocation of Catholic Leaders in Orlando last summer. I met a young woman and her mother from my diocese. The daughter, who had an obvious disability and was using a power wheelchair, had been chosen as a delegate to the Convocation; her mother, a college professor, was there as her assistant.
As we got acquainted, we chatted about accessibility issues in the church. The young woman told me that while most parishes have remedied architectural barriers such as curbs and restrooms, the seating area designated for wheelchairs is often still found way off to the side or at the very back of the sanctuary – evidence, she believes, that handicapped individuals are still not fully embraced as an integral part of parish life.
What she said next cut right to the heart: “It’s fine to be able to get in and out of church, but it would be nice if someone smiled at me once in a while, or spoke to me as if I actually knew what was going on.” I was stunned. All too quickly we wrapped up our conversation, traded business cards – yes, my new friend has a college education and a meaningful job – and went our separate ways. But I haven’t been able to get this conversation off my mind.
When I got home I did a bit of research on attitudes toward the disabled and was shocked by a recent study in the U.K. that found that two thirds of adults are afraid of people with disabilities and feel so awkward around them that they go out of their way to avoid them. Another study indicated that 1.4 million senior citizens in the U.K. feel lonely and cut off from society, many going for over a month at a time without talking to another human being. Since these were not American studies, it would be easy to dismiss this data, but I suspect that we have a lot in common with our British brothers and sisters.
Scholars in the field of disability studies suggest that disabled people mirror a certain kind of personal loss or death. They remind us of our own limitations and mortality – and that is what frightens us. As long as we can avoid those who are handicapped or elderly, we can keep our fears about our own fragility and eventual death at bay. But we are all broken in some way – if we were honest, we would admit that we each experience areas of weakness or disability every day, and none of us is really more than one accident or illness away from losing our cherished independence.
The church proposes a different approach. In the face of suffering and death she tells us, “Be not afraid.” With words that echo through salvation history into the depths of our hearts, the Lord says to us, “Do not fear: I am with you” (Isaiah 41:10). He speaks these words not as One who merely observes our pain, but as One who experienced intense suffering and death in his own flesh before triumphing over death itself.
Reflecting on the wounds of the Risen Christ, we see that even our most difficult trials can be the place where God manifests his victory. He is always with us. Jesus promised this when he gave the disciples the same mission he gives to each of us: Go out to all the world!
So if we run toward our most vulnerable brothers and sisters rather than running away from them, marginalizing them or excluding them from our lives, we will experience the love of God in a powerful new way as we contribute to the building up of a society that witnesses to the beautiful, profound reality that God has created each of us in his own image and likeness, that he loves us infinitely, and that he has confided each person to the love of all.
(Sister Constance Veit is director of communications for the Little Sisters of the Poor.)

Water, water, everywhere?

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Sister alies therese

Complete the circle
By Sister alies therese
Maybe you remember reading this article in the NY Times in 2015 (Lizette Alvarez, 7/14/15)? All about the drought in Puerto Rico? Right the drought. The drought was causing an already deep in debt Puerto Rico more than $15million per month. One of the worst droughts in Puerto Rico’s history! Carraizo, the major reservoir, dropped more than 18 feet. more than 160,000 residents had water off for 48 hours and then on for 24; another 185,000 going without water in 24 hour cycles; and 10,000 or more were on 12 hour cycles. Alvarez reported the drought was caused by El Nino and most of the reservoirs were within 30 days of running out of water.
When she interviewed Mr. Davila he said: “Friends are showering at work or taking luxurious 30 minute showers on days when the water is flowing, not paying much attention to how much we waste and what we can do without!”
Mr. Saldana of the Aqueduct Board was asked how long the drought would last…he pointed skyward and simply said: ‘Ask Him.’
Have you though much about ‘water scarcity?’ We have become so attached to the water bottle, cup, coke or favorite tea/coffee, we forget just how scarce drinkable water can actually be. In fact, I think out of all our resources across the globe, water is the one we will fight over most, even more than oil or food.
The human body can live for several days, if not weeks, without lots of food. However, we cannot live without hydration.
I found some interesting information online to share with you: Water scarcity: is a lack of sufficient water to meet the needs within a region. Every continent is affected today. Some 2.8 billion people lack access to clean drinking water.
Water shortage: may be caused by climate change, droughts, floods, pollution and overuse of water.
Water crisis: means that potable (unpolluted) water is less than a region needs.
Physical water scarcity: means there are inadequate natural water sources available. There is also a shortage of water available for sanitation.
The United Nations Millinneum Declaration aimed by 2015 to “halve the proportion of people who are unable to reach or afford safe drinking water.” I’m not sure if that goal was reached but seems very important to do so.
Here’s a mouthful: there is 1 quadrillion acre-feet of water is on Earth. My mind boggles…and yet only 162.1 billion acre-feet is fresh water for human consumption. More than 1 billion people live in a stressed water condition – that is one in every six of us. Water stress is intensifying in China and India and in sub-Saharan Africa more than a quarter of the population is water stressed.
When there is change in climate the glaciers recede, there is reduced stream and river flow, and ponds and lakes shrink.
When there is water crisis it means inadequate drinking water for more than 884 million people across the globe. The World Bank reports that 88 percent of all waterborne diseases are caused by unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene. Some countries seem to have so few choices.
Economic water scarcity is caused by lack of infrastructure investment to draw water from rivers, aquifers or other water sources, or insufficient human capacity to satisfy demand. This means people have to travel very long distances daily to fetch water often contaminated by domestic or agricultural waste.
In the U.S., 95 percent of our water is underground. As farmers in the Texan High Plains pump groundwater faster than rain replenishes it, the water table drops.
Then there’s our Puerto Rico. I did mention the drought. Now I must remind you that some few weeks ago Puerto Rico (along with Virgin Islands, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, even a bit of Mississippi) was hit with floods of water and the near drowning of the island, probably not what folks prayed for a couple of years ago during the drought.
How much do you use for a shower? Every day? Or a bath? How long do you leave water running while brushing your teeth? It actually makes a difference to our own state and to our friends across the world.
Water features big in the Hebrew Bible (ask Elijah, consult the Psalms) and even in the New Testament we find the first major action of Jesus’ ministry: His baptism in the Jordan. The woman at the well will hear from Jesus: ‘Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give will never thirst; the water I give will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (Jn. 4:14)
Have you ever considered that key to our sacramental system is water? This very water. Baptism…whether we are submerged in the Mississippi River, or baptized with a few little teaspoons, water is crucial. When someone becomes a Eucharistic Minister, I see them in the community feeding the hungry.
Our commitment to reversing some of this water scarcity has to do with our willingness to put our baptism to work. Whether we are helping build wells, reorganizing our thinking about our own personal use, or now being tested by the savageness of the waters of Hurricanes Maria, Harvey or Irma, we need to be much more thoughtful and prayerful. Puerto Rico has a lot to remind us of and their cries (also water) for help must not go unheeded. At this writing, still

less than 70 percent of the folks in Puerto Rico have useable water. Blessings.
(Sister alies therese is a vowed Catholic solitary who lives an eremitical life. Her days are formed around prayer, art and writing. She is author of six books of spiritual fiction and is a weekly columnist. She lives and writes in Mississippi.)

Go beyond admiration to imitation

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Complete the circle
By George Evans
As we continue our journey in faith with the Lord there are times when familiar words of Scripture jump off the page and grab us anew. Mt. 9:9, known as the Call of Mathew, recently did that to me. Jesus “saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.” What an extraordinary event. A hated tax collector hears a call from an emerging Jewish leader, leaves his livelihood and follows an itinerant preacher, preserving for us his Gospel including the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount.
The other apostles were similarly called, perhaps not as dramatically as Matthew, but called by Jesus to follow him. They too responded to the call. As Christians we are called to follow Jesus and that can be hard. We spend our life trying as best we can to do it. Jesus himself tells us what’s required. “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.” (Mt 10:38) Our cross can be many different things: death of a loved one, incapacitating illness, financial insecurity, etc. Jesus challenges us to embrace our cross, whatever it may be, as he did his, and then be open to his help. He showed us graphically in accepting his passion and crucifixion. Our cross cannot be more demanding. Whatever it is, he will be there to help us.
Taking up our cross may sound overwhelming. A recent retreat master helped me wrestle with this concept. His point was that Jesus only asks us to follow him. He suggested that Jesus repeatedly asked those he called in the gospels to follow him. He never asked them to admire him. Jesus does not let us off the hook.
It is easy to admire someone from a distance. We do it all the time. Think of the baseball, football or basketball player that makes an acrobatic play and we sit back and admire it and wish that we could have done something like it. It would have been easy for the apostles to have admired Jesus and his incredible miracles and parables. But Jesus would not let them get away with just admiration. After training them he sent them forth two by two into the towns and villages to follow, to teach and heal as he had taught them. He taught them to imitate him not to simply admire him.
The United States Catholic Bishops add to this theology: To choose the road to discipleship is to dispose oneself for a share in the cross. It is not enough to believe with one’s mind; a Christian must also be a doer of the word, a wayfarer with a witness to Jesus.
The follower, the disciple then must not only admire but imitate Jesus. When Jesus asks Peter three times after the Resurrection if he loved him Peter answered that he did. Then Jesus told him three times to do something: feed my lambs and tend my sheep. (Jn21:15-24). It wasn’t enough for Peter to proclaim his love for Jesus. Like Peter, we must do something to be his follower. We must imitate Jesus, not just admire him.
It must start with Sunday Mass, the sacraments and prayer. Then imitate Jesus in ministering to his lambs and sheep: visit the sick, the dying, the lonely, the imprisoned; help with parish programs and schools; feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty (Mt 25), advocate for the poor and marginalized; welcome the immigrant and refugee; comfort those who seem to be left out. I name only a few ways to imitate and follow Jesus. Add your own ways. Any time you bring Jesus to another person in service of any kind then you have imitated Jesus and lifted your cross.
Fr. Ron Rohlheiser in the May, 20, 2005 edition of Mississippi Catholic adds a profound closing to my thoughts:
“We see – but we don’t see! We feel for the poor – but we don’t really feel for them! – We reach out – but we never reach across. The gap between the rich and poor is in fact widening, not narrowing. It’s widening worldwide, between nations. and it’s widening inside of virtually every culture.
The rich are becoming richer and the poor are being left ever further behind. Almost all the economic boom of the last 20 years has sent its windfall straight to the top, benefitig those who already have the most.
What Jesus asks of us is simply that we see the poor, that we do not let affluence become a narcotic that knocks out our eyesight. Riches aren’t bad and poverty isn’t beautiful. But nobody gets to heaven without a letter of reference from the poor.”
(George Evans is a retired pastoral minister and member of Jackson St. Richard Parish.)

Consecration an opportunity for diocesan renewal

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Seminarian corner
By Deacon Aaron Williams
As the world observes the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady in Fatima, Portugal, many bishops are taking the opportunity to consecrate their diocese to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, as requested by Our Lady of Fatima 100 years ago. I am very thankful that our own Bishop Joseph Kopacz has chosen to do likewise, but for more reasons than the simple anniversary of Fatima.
When our diocese was founded 180 years ago, it was originally established under the patronage of Our Lady of Sorrows (the titular title of the basilica in Natchez). I have done much reading on the history of our diocese, but I have never been able to find even speculation on why such a title was chosen. It could be as simple as a particular devotion of Bishop Chanche, our founding bishop. Regardless, I find the patronage of Our Lady of Sorrows very fitting considering the history of our diocese.
For one thing, the state of Mississippi has a history of sorrow — particularly in our struggles with poverty and racism. Likewise, the history of Catholicism in this state includes the martyrdom of several Jesuit priests and many lay Catholics during the eighteenth century when the Gospel was first brought to Mississippi. Even today, there are struggles in maintaining a Catholic identity in our diocese, especially due to our very small numbers — where most of our schools have a majority of non-Catholic students and many of our parishes find themselves very empty on Sunday.
I suppose we could just give up and say that Catholicism just didn’t work out in Mississippi; but, for that reason, I find Our Lady is still a great patron and model for our diocese today. Of course, Mary’s life and motherhood was filled with various sorrows and often some confusion. I doubt Mary always understood why things had to happen the way they did in her life and in the life of her Son. Still, Mary also experienced great joys and appears as a joyful mother both in her visit to Elizabeth and at the Wedding in Cana.
In this way, Mary stands as a great model of a life-long disciple to Christ by her willingness to endure the struggles of the faith and deeply ponder her joys. For that reason, I find our bishop’s choice very appropriate to coincide this consecration with the launch of the diocese’s Pastoral Priorities. Mary is the model Christian. Thus, if we want to learn how to better express the Christian mission in our diocese, we should look to no other guide than Mary.
The three core goals of our Pastoral Priorities are to create welcoming and reconciling communities, to facilitate life-long discipleship, and to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord. At the Wedding in Cana, we see Mary as a sort of reconciler — attempting to prevent the embarrassment of their hosts. Likewise, Our Lady of Fatima requested that we fervently pray for the reconciliation and peace of the world. Surely, Mary can also bring about such reconciliation in our parishes.
I already said that Mary was a life-long disciple of Christ, but it is worth stating that she was also the first disciple. Who better than Mary to teach us how to follow her Son? Finally, Mary’s command to “do whatever he tells you” can be taken by us as a command to make Christ the Lord of our hearts. He was truly both her Son and her Lord, and so by promoting devotion to her, our bishop is proclaiming the Lordship of Christ in our diocese. Likewise, families which make a place for Mary in their home similarly set Christ as the Lord of their family.
I hope that all the priests, religious and lay faithful of our diocese take great advantage of the opportunity given by our bishop in this total consecration to Mary’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. There is a lot of room for growth in what is still a very young diocese in the history of the Church. From the beginning, Mary has been the mother of the church in Mississippi and we should frequently request her fervent intercession on our behalf. This consecration is a great opportunity for the renewal of the Catholic faith in our diocese, and we would be making an incredible mistake to not take advantage of this moment.
(Deacon Aaron Williams is concluding a ministry internship with the Catholic Community of Meridian. He and his classmate, Deacon Nick Adam, will return to Notre Dame Seminary within the week to complete their final year of seminary formation before their priestly ordinations on May 31, 2018.)

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IN EXILE

Father Ron Rolheiser

By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Be still and know that I am God. Scripture assures us that if we are still we will come to know God, but arriving at stillness is easier said than done. As Blaise Pascal once stated, “All the miseries of the human person come from the fact that no one can sit still for one hour.” Achieving stillness seems beyond us and this leaves us with a certain dilemma, we need stillness to find God, but we need God’s help to find stillness. With this in mind, I offer a prayer for stillness.
God of stillness and of quiet …
• Still the restlessness of my youth: still that hunger that would have me be everywhere, that hunger to be connected to everyone, that wants to see and taste all that is, that robs me of peace on a Friday night. Quiet those grandiose dreams that want me to stand out, to be special. Give me the grace to live more contentedly inside my own skin.
• Still the fever I inhale from all the energy that surrounds me, that makes my life feel small. Let me know that my own life is enough, that I need not make an assertion of myself, even as the whole world beckons this of me from a million electronic screens. Give me the grace to sit at peace inside my own life.
• Still my sexuality, order my promiscuous desires, my lusts, my polymorphous aching, my relentless need for more intimacy. Quiet and order my earthy desires without taking them away. Give me the grace to see others without a selfish sexual color.
• Still my anxiety, my heartaches, my worries, and stop me from always being outside the present moment. Let each day’s worries be sufficient onto themselves. Give me the grace to know that you have pronounced my name in love, that my name written in heaven, that I am free to live without anxiety.
• Still my unrelenting need to be busy all the time, to occupy myself, to be always planning for tomorrow, to fill every minute with some activity, to seek distraction rather than quiet. Give me the grace to sit in a quiet that lets me savor a sunset and actually taste the water I’m drinking.
• Still the disappointment that comes with age. Soothe the unacknowledged anger I feel from not achieving much of what I’ve wanted in life, the failure that I feel in the face of all that I’ve left untried and unfinished. Still in me the bitterness that comes from failure. Save me from the jealousy that comes unbidden as I begrudgingly accept the limits of my life. Give me the grace to accept what circumstance and failure have dealt me.
• Still in me the fear of my own shadow, the fear I feel in the face of the powerful, dark forces that unconsciously threaten me. Give me the courage to face my darkness as well as my luminosity. Give me the grace to not be fearful before my own complexity.
• Still in me the congenital fear that I’m unloved, that I’m unlovable, that love has to be earned, that I need to be more worthy. Silence in me the nagging suspicion that I’m forever missing out, that I’m odd, an outsider, that things are unfair, and that I’m not being respected and recognized for who I am. Give me the grace to know that I’m a beloved child of a God whose love need not be earned.
• Still in me my false fear of you, my propensity for a misguided piety, my need to treat you like a distant and feared dignitary rather than as a warm friend. Give me the grace to relate to you in a robust way, as a trusted friend with whom I can jest, wrestle, and relate to in humor and intimacy.
• Still my unforgiving thoughts, the grudges I nurse from my past, from the betrayals I’ve suffered, from the negativity and abuses I’ve been subject to. Quiet in me the guilt I carry from my own betrayals. Still in me all that’s wounded, unresolved, bitter, and unforgiving. Give the quiet that comes from forgiveness.
• Still in me my doubts, my anxieties about your existence, about your concern, and about your fidelity. Calm inside me the compulsion to leave a mark, to plant a tree, to have a child, to write a book, to create some form of immortality for myself. Give me the grace to trust, even in darkness and doubt, that you will give me immortality.
Still my heart so that I may know that you are God, that I may know that you create and sustain my every breath, that you breathe the whole universe into existence every second, that everyone, myself no less than everyone else, is your beloved, that you want our lives to flourish, that you desire our happiness, that nothing falls outside your love and care, and that everything and everybody is safe in your gentle, caring hands, in this world and the next.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

Putting disappointment in perspective

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By Sister alies therese
“A woman, so says Anthony deMello,SJ, went to the doctor with a very bad summer cold and nothing he gave her seemed to cure it. She was so frustrated. The doctor suggested the following: go home, take a hot shower and before drying yourself stand in front of the A/C, stark naked. ‘Will that cure me?’ No, but it might give you pneumonia and that I can cure!”
How many times have you tried to solve one problem by applying another answer? Life can get very confusing if we mix and match too many things. This includes our spiritual life as well as all the other aspects of our lives. On the other hand sometimes an ‘out of the box’ thought might just open up a new horizon!
Most of the time patience is required for obtaining answers to our deepest questions. We can repeat the answers of others, and I’m not implying they aren’t ‘correct,’ or we can search for a way to say it to ourselves that expresses our own experience. The ‘who am I, where have I come from, where am I going?’ type questions face us at each turn of age. Our transitional times of say 16, 25, 40, 60 or 80 years, for example, bring to bear different responses…not necessarily a different ‘answer’ but a deeper way, one would hope, of considering the matter. Allowing ourselves to pay attention to our hearts and the Heart of God invites us to grow deeply.
What do you do with disappointment? Here’s a word among many that describes how you might feel about your reality. Here are some responses I received: I get angry’ I get frustrated; I get worried; I blame myself; I blame others; and yet the most refreshing was: I get on with it!
Disappointment links us to not being in control, even when we thought we had done everything we were ‘supposed to’…and still ‘it’ didn’t work out. Perhaps it is a relationship or some task. Perhaps we felt we were a disappointment to parents or spouse?
Each day we have the opportunity to face our disappointments and to turn them into something even more fruitful. I was disappointed not to see Saturn or Jupiter because of the rain, but I saw a most magnificent light show crack across the purpled sky. Children are often disappointed because they are told one thing and then the adults do otherwise. Sometimes this cannot be helped…sometimes it can.
There are many stories from Scripture that show shades of disappointment. They also show a new beginning. Finding Jesus in the temple, for example, reminds us to pay attention to what is most important. Mary and Joseph were so worried and disappointed that Jesus was not with them on their journey home. They had to travel a whole day back to the city to find Him and when they did, He was doing something very unexpected, teaching. They were disappointed He had not been with them (was it really fear He was lost?)…they rejoiced at finding Him. Often being away from the Lord and coming back together brings the sweetest blessings.
If you run into disappointment: breathe. After that begin to ask yourself some questions: what is most important? How should I proceed? And, is God best served by this project/whatever? If indeed God has closed that door…look for the window He has cracked open. If it is of God you need not be disappointed for very long. Trust He will show you the way forward.
Our growth in faith is much like this. Is it easier to say ‘yes I believe’ when we are younger or older? The building of a spiritual life is critical as we journey because it is there we meet our Lord and there we face ourselves. It is within this growing body of both knowledge and experience that we discover how the plan of God shepherds us forward to final and full union. We have been given that ‘playbook’ in our Scriptures, the writings of saints and holy folks from over the centuries. Let’s take the opportunity every day to explore those writings and learn to apply them to our lives. It may not be as outrageous as standing naked in front of the A/C…but in fact it has much better promise of a ‘cure.’
The Book of Proverbs, full of such wisdom and wit, remind us of this:
“Trust wholeheartedly in God, put no faith in your own perception; in every course you take, have God in mind: God will see your paths are smooth. Do not think of yourself as wise, fear God and turn your back on evil: health-giving, this, to your body, relief to your bones.” (Prov3:5ff)
(Sister alies therese is a vowed Catholic solitary who lives an eremitical life. Her days are formed around prayer, art and writing. She is author of six books of spiritual fiction and is a weekly columnist. She lives and writes in Mississippi.)