Parish Update -- Good Friday 2021
Dear Parishioners of St. Joseph and Corpus Christi:
I wanted to mention a couple of things for you to keep in mind.
1. Kathleen McMullin -- Religious Vocation
Fr. Nick Adam, Vocation Director for the diocese made the following announcement in a note to the priests of the diocese last week:
"Congratulations to Ms. Kathleen McMullin of Jackson who has discerned that it is time to enter formation for religious life! Kathleen will begin postulancy with the Franciscan Sisters of the Martyr St. George (Alton, Illinois) in early September. It has been a blessing to walk with her and she continues to be a great source of inspiration for young women in our diocese. Please keep Kathleen in your prayers. I will have “more on this story” in the coming weeks!"
"Congratulations to Ms. Kathleen McMullin of Jackson who has discerned that it is time to enter formation for religious life! Kathleen will begin postulancy with the Franciscan Sisters of the Martyr St. George (Alton, Illinois) in early September. It has been a blessing to walk with her and she continues to be a great source of inspiration for young women in our diocese. Please keep Kathleen in your prayers. I will have “more on this story” in the coming weeks!"
Kathleen was a student at Mississippi State from 2010 until 2014 when she graduated. She was very active here with Campus Ministry. Please keep her in prayer as she continues to discern God's work in her life.
2. Sr. Thea Bowman
Speaking of religious vocations... As you know, Sr. Thea Bowman's cause for sainthood was opened in our diocese about 2-1/2 years ago. She grew up here in the Diocese of Jackson around Canton, Mississippi. She died on March 30, 1990, which was Good Friday that year. She will be on our fourth window to be installed here at St. Joseph in our Surrounded by the Saints stained glass window campaign. She wrote this on her deathbed shortly before the Holy Week she died. I wanted to share it with you.
Let us resolve to make this week holy by claiming Christ’s redemptive grace and by living holy lives. The Word became flesh and redeemed us by his holy life and holy death. This week especially, let us accept redemption by living grateful, faithful, prayerful, generous, just and holy lives.
Let us resolve to make this week holy by reading and meditating Holy Scripture.
So often, we get caught up in the hurry of daily living. As individuals and as families, reserve prime time to be with Jesus, to hear the cries of the children waving palm branches, to see the Son of Man riding on an ass' colt, to feel the press of the crowd, to be caught up in the "Hosannas” and to realize how the cries of acclamation will yield to the garden of suffering, to be there and watch as Jesus is sentenced by Pilate to Calvary, to see him rejected, mocked, spat upon, beaten and forced to carry a heavy cross, to hear the echo of the hammer, to feel the agony of the torn flesh and strained muscles, to know Mary’s anguish as he hung three hours before he died.
We recoil before the atrocities of war, gang crime, domestic violence and catastrophic illness. Unless we personally and immediately are touched by suffering, it is easy to read Scripture and to walk away without contacting the redemptive suffering that makes us holy. The reality of the Word falls on deaf ears.
Let us take time this week to be present to someone who suffers. Sharing the pain of a fellow human will enliven Scripture and help us enter into the holy mystery of the redemptive suffering of Christ.
Let us resolve to make this week holy by participating in the Holy Week services of the church, not just by attending, but also by preparing, by studying the readings, entering into the spirit, offering our services as ministers of the Word or Eucharist, decorating the church or preparing the environment for worship.
Let us sing, "Lord, have mercy," and "Hosanna." Let us praise the Lord with our whole heart and soul and mind and strength, uniting with the suffering church throughout the world -- in Rome and Northern Ireland, in Syria and Lebanon, in South Africa and Angola, India and China, Nicaragua and El Salvador, in Washington, D.C., and Jackson, Mississippi.
Let us break bread together; let us relive the holy and redemptive mystery. Let us do it in memory of him, acknowledging in faith his real presence upon our altars.
Let us resolve to make this week holy by sharing holy peace and joy within our families, sharing family prayer on a regular basis, making every meal a holy meal where loving conversations bond family members in unity, sharing family work without grumbling, making love not war, asking forgiveness for past hurts and forgiving one another from the heart, seeking to go all the way for love as Jesus went all the way for love.
Let us resolve to make this week holy by sharing holy peace and joy with the needy, the alienated, the lonely, the sick and afflicted, the untouchable.
Let us unite our sufferings, inconveniences and annoyances with the suffering of Jesus. Let us stretch ourselves, going beyond our comfort zones to unite ourselves with Christ's redemptive work.
We unite ourselves with Christ's redemptive work when we reconcile, when we make peace, when we share the good news that God is in our lives, when we reflect to our brothers and sisters God's healing, God's forgiveness, God's unconditional love.
Let us be practical, reaching out across the boundaries of race and class and status to help somebody, to encourage and affirm somebody, offering to the young an incentive to learn and grow, offering to the downtrodden resources to help themselves.
May our fasting be the kind that saves and shares with the poor, that actually contacts the needy, that gives heart to heart, that touches and nourishes and heals.
During this Holy Week when Jesus gave his life for love, let us truly love one another.
-- Sr. Thea Bowman
Prayers and best wishes for you and your families and loved ones during these final days of Holy Week.
Peace,
Fr. Jason
