Forming our future
By Jeannie Roberts
The significant role of catechists, teachers and staff in a Catholic school setting is to shape and mold children for eternity. Our walk, our talk and our sharing of our own faith in our daily lives, as well as our personal journey, all help a child to grow to love Jesus.
Our journeys are all different – some filled early with much sadness as well as much joy. Jesus walks with us daily as a teacher and guides us to be the light in the darkness, the joy in the sorrow, the calmness in the storm and the compassion and hope to the downtrodden.
Jesus lives in us and we live in him. Our mission is not only to educate with knowledge, but to fill the hearts of children with spiritual qualities that help them to grow as disciples of Jesus. As the 12 apostles were chosen, we teachers have also been chosen and we are answering the call to know, love and serve the Lord through the children we teach. Ephesians 4:11-12 says, “And he gave some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers, to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”
At St. Elizabeth School we try to make our students aware of the poor and less fortunate. We minister to them throughout the year by collecting food and taking it weekly to church at our school Masses. Students sometimes help store, sack and pass out the food when the needy come to receive it. This ministry is organized by Michael and Jackie Jacob of our parish along with teacher Sue Craig.
Eternity involves more than feeding the bodies of the less fortunate. Students write letters to shut-ins, nursing home patients and the elderly of our parish, to let them know they are thought of and are being remembered in prayer. Throughout Lent, classes send a “footnote” to parishioners of their choice, relatives or friends. Small notes in the shape of a foot have a greeting on the front and a short note written by each student on the back.
Students also serve and lead the singing at our Masses, all while learning what their faith is about. Many non-Catholics are being exposed to the loving community of believers; some families sometimes even join the church when their children start attending the school. Evangelization is at its best when a parent tells you how their heart has been touched by their child’s praying and that the family desires to join the church.
Students are also encouraged daily to act the way Jesus would act in each and every situation. They have a morning devotional read on the intercom and then recite the school’s pledge, “Eagle Endeavors,” created by Jane Rutz and Georgette Sabbatini. The pledge is as follows:
E – Embrace the teachings of the Holy Bible;
A – Act generously to those in need;
G – Grow academically;
L – Love sincerely;
E – Entrust my family, my school and myself to God’s care;
S – Strive for kindness with every thought, word and action.
At the end of each month we take one of the “Eagle Endeavors” and the teachers vote on a class who has exemplified that chosen endeavor. The Advisory Council then treats the winning class. The prize may be a free dress day, pizza, ice cream party, picnic etc.
Students from first-sixth grades lead the Stations of the Cross each Friday during Lent, discuss Lenten practices and write on a cross in the rotunda what they will do for someone or what they might give up for Lent. All students participate.
As a student body, they gather weekly to pray for the needs of the parish, the sick and their own personal needs. We often say a decade of the rosary for the seriously ill and suffering parishioners. The sixth grade students will hold the hands of the younger children and walk them to their cars in the pickup lines.
We as teachers try to listen and respond to the problems our children may have in their worlds. Many children need a friend to help them through the struggles in their lives. We refer serious problems to the counseling program offered in the Delta through our diocese. Father Scott Thomas, our pastor, meets and talks to students about their problems, or he will talk to a class on how to treat fellow classmates if the need arises.
Some students have had experiences that we as adults have not had to face yet – be it the death of a sibling, parent, or grandparent – and just need a compassionate person to help them through a difficult journey in their life. Our teachers and school can be the calm in the storm. We will never know our influence on our students.
God has called us by name and we follow the call to know, love and serve Him through our role as teachers which covers more than grade level books and different teaching techniques. Our vocations touch the heart and soul of each and every child we teach. We thank God for calling us on this special journey to be light in the darkness, joy in the sorrow, calm in the storm, company to the lonely and compassion and hope to the downtrodden.
(Jeannie Roberts is the principal of Clarksdale St. Elizabeth School.)

Reflections on Life
By Father Jerome LeDoux, S.V.D.
If you don’t spend time pondering what it means to be a saint and what one must do to become a saint, you had better hop to it, because you will not get to heaven unless you become a saint. What is not holy cannot abide God’s presence. So, if you die short of sainthood, something drastic has to happen between you and God before you are ushered permanently into the all-holy presence of God in heaven.
You may not believe in purgatory, but that is irrelevant. Whether you believe in purgatory or not, if you are not holy enough when you die, God will somehow cleanse you – purge you – so that you are sanctified, holy and fit to enter into God’s heaven and remain there in rapture forever. The alternative is unacceptable, quite unthinkable and in every way and by all means to be avoided, for the alternative is to be without God forever, and forever is infinitely beyond a quadrillion years.
Those who try to evade that uncomfortable conundrum are consigned to do as one inconsolable man did for his close friend who had died. Fearing that the soul of his friend might be lost because his friend, though a good man, had serious faults, he finally wrote an epitaph and put it on his friend’s grave in bold letters: “Too bad for heaven, too good for hell; where he went I cannot tell.” I dare say, innumerable people, both known and unknown to us, fit that description in uncanny fashion.
Since we must all become saints if we are to be with God forever, what are the makings of a saint? Perhaps we can begin with a pivotal pearl of wisdom shared in James 3:2, “If anyone does not fall short in speech, he is a perfect man, able to bridle his whole body also.” None of us have any illusions about just how difficult it is to master our thoughts and the resulting words that spill out through our lips. The wellspring of discipline and control of our lives resides in our thoughts and words, being never judgmental, always forgiving, ever inclusive, supportive and loving.
Must a saint do spectacular things? A few, such as Joan of Arc, do. However, by far most saints live ordinary lives highlighted by laser focus on the transforming grace of God. That leads us to puzzle over the difference between Thérèse of Lisieux and her fellow nuns. All of them did the same, daily things together, but with results as markedly different as humdrum, everyday nuns and the sanctified life of Thérèse.
A good example is Thérèse’s comment on being ecstatic, “I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.” So that laser focus on the good intention, on God’s mercy and grace made all the difference.
“I mean to try to find a lift by which I may be raised unto God, for I am too tiny to climb the steep stairway of perfection. Your arms, then, O Jesus, are the lift that must raise me up even unto Heaven. To get there I need not grow; on the contrary, I must remain little, I must become still less.”
Inspired by and driven by the Holy Spirit, Thérèse of Lisieux reveals in her autobiography, “Story of a Soul,” a spirituality manual that is at once a primer, a primary textbook, an undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate textbook. The proof of the relevance and truth of “her little way” of childlike trust in and love of God lies in the fact that the work was inhaled hurriedly by nuns around the world.
On Oct. 20, 1898, Mother Agnes of Jesus and Mother Marie de Gonzague, published an exceptionally long, 476-page obituary to be sent to all the Carmels in France. The 2,000 surplus copies were sold off at 4 francs each.
To everyone’s surprise, a second 4,000-copy edition was required six months later, and soon a third. In explosive fashion, by 1956 there were 40 editions, let alone translations that began in 1901. More than 50 translations were listed, with figures always being exceeded and uncontrollable as the pirate editions multiplied.
From 1969, a team continued the critical edition of 266 known letters, 54 poems (1979), 8 plays (1985), 21 prayers (1988) and the Final Conversations (1971).
Already begun during her life, conversions and cures exploded with her memoirs.
The whole work was gathered into one volume –Completed Works – running to 1,600 pages of Bible paper. The collection was presented to John Paul II and then Cardinal Ratzinger on Feb. 18, 1993. Numerous tomes written by brilliant theologians fall short of the simple biography, “Story of a Soul.” Thérèse’s work and her life moved Pope John Paul II on Oct. 19, 1997, to declare her the 33rd. Doctor of the Church, the youngest and, at the time, only the third woman.
As I pen these words, I am smiling constantly as I think of this great heroine.   –
“God is love, and all who abide in love abide in God and God in them.”   (1 John 4:16)
(Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD, lives at Sacred Heart Residence in Pass Christian. He has written “Reflections on Life “since 1969.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
“A common soldier dies without fear, yet Jesus died afraid.” Iris Murdoch wrote this and that truth can be somewhat disconcerting. Why? If someone dies with deep faith, shouldn’t he or she die with a certain calm and trust drawn from that faith? Wouldn’t the opposite seem more logical, that is, if someone dies without faith shouldn’t he or she die with more fear? And perhaps the most confusing of all: Why did Jesus, the paragon of faith, die afraid, crying out in a pain that can seem like a loss of faith?
The problem lies in our understanding. Sometimes we can be very naïve about faith and its dynamics, thinking that faith in God is a ticket to earthly peace and joy. But faith isn’t a path to easy calm, nor does it assure us that we will exit this life in calm, and that can be pretty unsettling and perplexing at times. Here’s an example:
The renowned spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen, in a book entitled, “In Memoriam,” shares this story around his mother’s death: Nouwen, a native of the Netherlands, was teaching in the U.S. when he received a call that his mother was dying back home in the Netherlands.
On his flight home from New York to Amsterdam he reflected on his mother’s faith and virtue and concluded that she was the most Christian woman he had ever known. With that as a wonderfully consoling thought, he fantasized about how she would die, how her last hours would be filled with faith and calm, and how that faith and calm would be her final, faith-filled witness to her family.
But that’s not the way it played out. Far from being calm and unafraid, his mother, in the final hours leading up to her death, was seemingly in the grip of some inexplicable darkness, of some deep inner disquiet, and of something that looked like the antithesis of faith. For Nouwen this was very disconcerting. Why? Why would his mother be undergoing this disquiet when for all her life she had been a woman of such strong faith?
Initially this unsettled him deeply, until a deeper understanding of faith broke through. His mother had been a woman who every day of her adult life had prayed to Jesus, asking him to empower her to live as he lived and to die as he died. Well, seemingly, her prayer was heard. She did die like Jesus who, though having a rock-solid faith, sweated blood while contemplating his own death and then cried out on the cross, anguished with the feeling that God had forsaken him.
In brief, her prayer had been answered. She had asked Jesus to let her die as he did and, given her openness to it, her prayer was granted, to the confusion of her family and friends who had expected a very different scene. That is also true for the manner of Jesus’ death and the reaction of his family and disciples. This isn’t the way anyone naturally fantasizes the death of a faith-filled person.
But a deeper understanding of faith reverses that logic: Looking at the death of Henri Nouwen’s mother, the question is not, how could this happen to her? The question is rather: Why wouldn’t this happen to her? It’s what she asked for and, being a spiritual athlete who asked God to send her the ultimate test, why wouldn’t God oblige?
There’s a certain parallel to this in the seeming doubts suffered by Mother Teresa. When her diaries were published and revealed her dark night of the soul, many people were shocked and asked: How could this happen to her? A deeper understanding of faith would, I believe, ask instead: Why wouldn’t this happen to her, given her faith and her openness to enter into Jesus’ full experience?
But, this has still a further complication: Sometimes for persons of deep faith it doesn’t happen this way and instead he or she dies calm and unafraid, buoyed up by faith like a safe ship on stormy waters. Why does this happen to some and not to others? We have no answer. Faith doesn’t put us all on the same conveyor-belt where one dynamic fits all.  Sometimes people with deep faith die, as Jesus did, in darkness and fear; and sometimes people with deep faith they die in calm and peace.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross submits that each of us goes through five clear stages in dying, namely, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.  Kathleen Dowling Singh suggests that what Kubler-Ross defines as acceptance needs some further nuance.
According to Singh, the toughest part of that acceptance is full surrender and, prior to that surrender, some people, though not everyone, will undergo a deep interior darkness that, on the surface, can look like despair. Only after that, do they experience joy and ecstasy.
All of us need to learn the lesson that Nouwen learned at his mother’s deathbed:  Faith, like love, admits of various modalities and may not be judged simplistically from the outside.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
A seminarian I know recently went to a party on a Friday evening at a local university campus. The group was a crowd of young, college students and when he was introduced as a seminarian, as someone who was trying to become a priest and who had taken a vow of celibacy, the mention of celibacy evoked some giggles in the room, some banter, and a number of jokes about how much he must be missing out on in life. Poor, naïve fellow!
Initially, within this group of millennials, his religious beliefs and what this had led to in his life was regarded as something between amusing and pitiful. But, before the evening was out, several young women had come, cried on his shoulder, and shared about their frustration with their boyfriends’ inability to commit fully to their relationship.
This incident might serve as a parable describing today’s young people in our secularized world. They exhibit what might aptly be called a bi-polar character about faith, church, family, sexual ethos, and many other things that are important to them.
They present an inconsistent picture: On the one hand, by and large, they are not going to church, at least with any regularity; they are not following the Christian ethos on sexuality; they seem indifferent to and even sometimes hostile to many cherished religious traditions; and they can appear unbelievably shallow in their addiction and enslavement to what’s trending in the world of entertainment, fashion, and information technology. Looked at from one perspective, our kids today can appear irreligious, morally blasé, and on a heavy diet of the kind of superficiality that characterizes reality television and video games.  More seriously still, they can also appear myopic, greedy, pampered and excessively self-interested. Not a pretty picture.
But this isn’t exactly the picture. Beneath that surface, in most cases, you will find someone who is very likeable, sincere, soft, good-hearted, gracious, moral, warm, generous and searching for all the right things (without much help from a culture that lacks clear moral guidance and is fraught with over-choice). The good news is that most young people, at the level of their real desires, are not at odds at all with God, faith, church and family. For the most part, youth today are still very good people and want all the right things.
But, that isn’t always so evident. Sometimes their surface seems to trump their depth so that who they really are and what they really want is not so evident. We see the surface and, seen there, our youth can appear more self-interested than generous, more shallow than deep, more blasé than morally sensitive, and more religiously indifferent than faith-filled. They can also manifest a smugness and self-sufficiency that suggests little vulnerability and no need for guidance from anyone beyond themselves.
Hence their bi-polarity: Mostly they want all the right things, but, too often, because of a lack of genuine guidance and their addiction to the culture, they aren’t making the kinds of choices that will bring them what they more-deeply desire. Sexuality is a prime example here: Studies done on millennials indicate that most of them want, at the end of the day, to be inside a monogamous, faithful marriage. The problem is that they also believe that they can first allow themselves 10 to 15 years of sexual promiscuity, without having to accept that practicing 10 to 15 years of infidelity is not a good preparation for the kind of fidelity needed to a sustain marriage and family. In this, as in many other things, they are caught between their cultural ethos and their own fragile securities. The culture trumpets a certain ethos, liberation from the timidities of the past, complete with a smugness that belittles whatever questions it. But much of that smugness is actually whistling in the dark. Deep down, our youth are pretty insecure and, happily, this keeps them vulnerable and likeable.
Maybe Louis Dupre, the retired philosopher who taught for some many years at Yale, captures it best when he says that today’s young people are not bad, they’re just not finished.  That’s a simple insight that captures a lot. Someone can be wonderful and very likeable, but still immature. Moreover, if you’re young enough, that can even be attractive, the very definition of cool. The reverse is also, often times, true: More than a few of us, adults, suffer from our own bi-polarity: we are mature, but far from wonderful and likeable. This makes for some strange, paradoxical binaries.
So who is the actual young person of today? Is it the person who is wrapped up in his or her own world, obsessive about physical appearance, addicted to social media, living outside marriage with his or her partner, smug in his or her own non-traditional moral and religious views? That, I believe, is the surface appearance. The actual young person of today is warm, good-hearted, generous and waiting – waiting consciously for love and affirmation, and waiting unconsciously for God’s embrace.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

complete the circle
By George Evans
Last weekend I was fortunate, even blessed, to attend and participate in the ordination and first Mass of Father Jason Johnston. He and Father Joseph Le were both ordained by Bishop Joseph Kopacz in the Cathedral of St. Peter on Saturday, May 14 and each celebrated his first Mass the next day, May 15.
Fr. Johnston celebrated in his home parish, Vicksburg St. Paul and Father Le in Greenville St. Joseph, where he had previously spent some time in ministry. I urge you to not miss the next chance to attend an ordination and first Mass, particularly when you know the ordinandi.
I met Jason before he entered seminary at the 7a.m. daily Mass at St. Richard where I was on staff at the time. I was from Vicksburg and our families had known each other so there was an immediate connection. A short while later my wife and I invited him to participate in our St. Vincent de Paul Conference at St. Richard which had been established a short time earlier.
He agreed and became one of the earliest members after those of us who had started it. He was a great addition. He was young, an accounting graduate from Mississippi State who had been working for the Mississippi Department of Revenue for a couple of years, loved the Lord and was inclined to prayer and to service of the poor and marginalized.
Not surprisingly he was a great member open to every challenge of a fledging undertaking. About five months later, Saint Vincent de Paul hosted a farewell party for Jason at the home of our president, Jon Fairbank and his wife, Sue. We got to meet Jason’s wonderful mother and father and the rest of his great family. Jason was off to the seminary at St. Ben’s for two years and then Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans for four years culminating in becoming Father Jason Johnston six years later.
The power of the ordination liturgy is profound. The ordinandi is vouched for as to education and character by a priest involved in formation, makes his wish for ordination known to all, promises obedience to the bishop, receives the grace of the Litany of the Saints prayed by all present, is ordained by the laying on of hands by the bishop followed by his now brother priests, invested with stole and chasuble, has hands anointed by the bishop and is again welcomed by brother priests with a fraternal kiss of peace.
The Liturgy of the Eucharist follows and after what has just transpired is as rich and compelling as can be. I can’t imagine anyone present not being profoundly affected. I certainly was.
I went to Vicksburg with Carol for Father Johnston’s first Mass because we had known him more than six years and had just met Father Le although the beauty of his Vietnamese family and the dresses of the Vietnamese ladies was compelling. St. Paul’s outdid itself. I was so proud to say it’s where I grew up. Father Tom Lalor’s greeting and welcome were perfect. Father Jason had not one flaw in his Mass celebration.
As was the case at the ordination, the music and choir was exciting and the myriad seminarians carried out their tasks with attention and liturgical sense and touch. The homily by Father James Wehner, rector of Notre Dame Seminary, was superb in both content and delivery. It would be great if copies could be available. It was that good.
I can only contrast the power of the ordination on Saturday and the beauty and grace of the first Mass on Sunday with the pettiness, cynicism and silliness of our materialistic world and particularly our bankrupt politics. As Father Wehner and the psalmist pointed out in the homily and scripture, “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.”
If ever the Holy Spirit is needed, it is now. If ever we are called to renew the face of the earth, it is now. Only if we as lay people understand and accept that this task is ours as well as that of Bishop Kopacz, our priests and consecrated religious will we be able to renew the face of the earth.
As Father Wehner so eloquently preached, with the new beginnings of Father Jason Johnston and Father Joseph Le and the new influx of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, maybe, just maybe, we can all pull together and renew the face of the earth.
(George Evans is a retired pastoral minister who lives at St. Catherine’s Village and is a member of Jackson St. Richard Parish.)

Millennial reflections
Father Jeremy Tobin, O.Praem.
It is over. The media has almost unanimously declared this most recent legislative session the worst in recent memory. Agencies that provide basic services after disasters, floods and tornadoes, are under extreme pressure to fulfill their mandate. Tax and budget cuts seem to be the answer to everything.  School districts merged, a large state controlled super district of the least performing schools is not an answer but another problem.
Most of this impacts people of color and is another resegregating the schools. The struggles of the last century taught us that separate is never equal. Now they can quibble over percentages and test scores, but the money is never there for the districts that need it most.
Then there is the fight over the Jackson Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport. I realize that perhaps most of this paper’s readers live outside the limits of Jackson, and some may actually favor the state takeover of the airport, but with the current JMAA board and management the airport is doing well, and is in the black. Many say the fact that it is owned by the City of Jackson makes the move a blatant power grab.
I want to look at the effects of the huge tax cuts, trimmed down budgets, resulting in vital services not there for people who need them. The legislature despite the prosperity hype, seems determined to keep the poorest state in the Union, poor. Some of this is nothing but mean, like cutting food stamps, further restricting what people in need can purchase, and limiting the time period a person can be on the program.
The poor have been relabeled into the deserving and undeserving poor, and most are undeserving. Poverty is defined as moral failure. Getting needed services more and more requires legal intervention, by attorneys, not social work intervention. Proof of need becomes more difficult. If revenue is short, the poor suffer.
This is national. The reason so many bills resemble each other whether targeting the poor, immigrants or whoever often are crafted by the American Legislative  Exchange Council (ALEC). This group includes state legislators from all over the country. ALEC provides the framework, and they can adapt it to their particular ideology suited to their state.
There is a war against organized labor. The propaganda says that labor unions are un-American, yet it was the labor struggle of the last two centuries that gave us such things as the weekend, overtime and national labor laws to strengthen all workers.
Right to work is not right to work, but the right not to join or be forced to join a union. Workers work at the will of their employers. That puts them at risk. No one can survive on minimum wage. The national movement, “$15 and a union” has had, so far, two national days of strikes and rallies to increase the minimum wage.
Immigrant rights activists have killed more than 295 anti-immigrant bills introduced in the state legislature since 2000. Immigrants provide a huge labor pool in many labor intensive industries here in Mississippi. Many fell out of status for a number of innocent reasons, but are demonized and dehumanized. This keeps the poor divided.
As we settle into another year of being at the bottom of most everything, how should we look at this? Some are quite content with the way things went. Others are not. Their reaction runs a range from quiet desperation to speak up and show out. Those of us who see the poor as human beings needing help, have found another voice.
Especially for us Catholics this Argentine Pope is shaking things up. He is telling his clergy to get down in the slums with the poor. “Smell like the sheep.” In many addresses he has blasted elitism in any form. Even more he has gone to  the slums  himself. Demonstrating respect, compassion and mercy to believer and unbeliever alike.
Since Pope Francis inaugurated this Year of Mercy there have been beautiful expressions of this by parishes and communities across the country. We see that here in Mississippi, from one end to the other. We have a  healthy tradition of compassion, charity and helping those in need. We need to do more of it. With all the negative rhetoric, we need to drown it out, by living that old  song, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.”
(Father Jeremy Tobin, O.Praem, lives at the Priory of St. Moses the Black, Jackson.)