JACKSON – Odds are you’ve got a Christmas list going by now — gift ideas for everyone from your nephew to your goddaughter to your mailman. But what about the birthday boy? What’s the gift Jesus gets from you this Christmas?
Artwork: Madonna and Child, Provincia di Firenze, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence, c. 1466-1469. Public Domain.
If you’ve ever read the Book of Leviticus, you know all about the sacrifices God asks of the Israelites, referred to in the reading from Hebrews today. Leviticus can be a chore to read — a little repetitive, a little intimidating. There’s a lot of very specific actions that God asks His Chosen People to complete to make up for whatever they have done wrong. In essence, it’s a bit of a wish list for gifts.
But it’s a wish list that can really confuse you. What’s God going to do with a cereal offering? The kidneys of an animal? If you look closely, what God is doing here is beautiful. He’s customized his wish list to only those things He knows the Israelites can give. It’s God saying, in what amounts to theological baby-talk for folks who barely know of Him and His ways, exactly how they could be stewards. “Do this, but don’t do that. If you do that, do this and you will find My mercy.”
Our guide to stewardship — the Gospels of Christ — is less precise because by the time of Christ, God’s people have grown in understanding of love and mercy and relationship with the divine. Through Christ, we find out that God’s real wish list didn’t really consist of cereal offerings and the kidneys of various animals. It’s far simpler, but luckily, it’s something we still have on-hand.
My early religious training, for all its strengths, placed too heavy an emphasis on fear of God, fear of judgment, and fear of never being good enough to be pleasing to God. It took the biblical texts about God being angry and displeased with us literally. The downside of this was that many of us came away with feelings of guilt, shame and self-hatred, and understood those feelings religiously, with no sense that they might have more of a psychological than a religious origin. If you had feelings of guilt, shame and self-hatred, it was a signal that you were not living right, that you should feel some shame and that God was not pleased with you.
Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Well, as Hegel famously taught, every thesis eventually spawns its antithesis. Both in the culture and in many religious circles today, this has produced a bitter backlash. The current cultural and ecclesial ethos has brought with it a near-feverous acceptance of the insights from contemporary psychology vis-à-vis guilt, shame and self-hatred. We learned from Freud and others that many of our feelings of guilt, shame and self-hatred are really a psychological neurosis, and not an indication that we are doing anything wrong. Feelings of guilt, shame and self-hatred do not of themselves indicate that we are unhealthy religiously or morally or that God is displeased with us.
With this insight, more and more people have begun to blame their religious training for any feelings of guilt, shame and self-hatred. They have coined the term “Christian neurosis” and have begun speaking of “being in recovery” from their churches.
What’s to be said about this? In essence, some of this is healthy, a needed corrective, though some of it also suffers from its own naiveté. And, it has landed us here. Today, religious conservatives tend to reject the idea that guilt, shame and self-hatred are mainly a neurosis (for which our religious training is responsible), while religious liberals tend to favor this notion. Who is right?
A more balanced spirituality, I believe, combines the truth of both positions to produce a deeper understanding. Drawing on what is best in current biblical scholarship and on what is best in contemporary psychology, a more balanced spirituality makes these assertions.
First, that when our biblical language tells us that God gets angry and unleashes his fury, we are dealing with anthropomorphism. God doesn’t get angry with us when we do wrong. Rather what happens is that we get angry with ourselves and we feel as if that anger were somehow “God’s wrath.” Next, most psychologists today tell us that many of our feelings of guilt, shame and self-hatred are in fact unhealthy, a simple neurosis, and not at all an indication that we did something wrong. These feelings only indicate how we feel about ourselves, not how God feels about us.
However, that being admitted, it is too simple to write off our feelings of guilt, shame and self-hatred as a mere neurosis. Why? Because even if these feelings are completely or largely unmerited, they may still be an important voice inside us, that is, while they don’t indicate that God is displeased or angry with us, they still can be a voice inside us that won’t be silent until we ask ourselves why we are displeased and angry with ourselves.
Here’s an example. There is a wonderfully enlightening exchange in the 1990s movie, “City Slickers.” Three men are having a conversation about the morality of having a sexual affair. One asks the other, “If you could have an affair and get away with it, would you do it?” The other replies: “No, I still wouldn’t do it.” “Why not?” he is asked, “nobody would know.” His response contains a much-neglected insight regarding the question of guilt, shame and self-hatred. He replies, “I would know and I would hate myself for it!”
There is such a thing as Christian “guilt neurosis” (which incidentally is not limited to Christians, Jews, Muslims and other religious persons, but is universal among all morally sensitive people). However, not all feelings of guilt, shame and self-hatred are neurotic. Some are trying to teach us a deep moral and religious truth, that is, while we can never do a single thing to make God angry with us for one minute, we can do many things that make us angry with ourselves. While we can never do anything to make God hate us, we can do things that have us hate ourselves. And, while we can never do anything to make God withhold forgiveness from us, we can do things that make it difficult for us to forgive ourselves. God is never the problem. We are.
Feelings of guilt, shame and self-hatred do not of themselves indicate whether we have done something wrong, but they do indicate how we feel about what we have done – and that can be an important moral and religious voice inside us.
Not everything that bothers us is a pathology.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)
My first parish after graduating from college was Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Columbus, Ohio. Holy Spirit also had an elementary school and was truly a neighborhood parish. The parish was mostly made up of families with young children and older married couples who raised their children in the parish and school.
Fran Lavelle
That first year at Holy Spirit was the first time I was really aware of World Marriage Day. It may have been that during my high school and college years I had not paid attention, or it might be that our university parish did not celebrate World Marriage Day in a significant way. In any event, I recall the priest at Holy Spirit inviting all of the married couples to stand and re-new their wedding vows. As the married couples stood, I remember looking around and seeing a sea of children still seated along with myself. It was and still remains a powerful image in my mind. I remember witnessing those couples, young and old, recommitting their lives to one another. The vow to love one another in good times and in bad is much more profound knowing that a couple have had their share of both in the years they have been husband and wife.
I have a friend who has been married for over 50 years. In reflecting on her marriage, she speaks to how organically their marriage has evolved over the years. She told me once that she and her husband have had four “mini-marriages” within their one marriage. It is natural that as we age, we grow and mature.
In their marriage they were able to meet the challenges of their changing relationship as they moved through the various stages of life. Now retired, they have had the opportunity to look back and see that the work they put into remaining together built a bond that they could not have imagined on their wedding day. She tells me often that it is all a gift. The good and the not so good helped them grow in their love and strengthened their commitment to one another. If you are a couple or know a couple who have been married for a number of years you know exactly what I am talking about.
The church in her wisdom rightly celebrates the gift of marriage as both vocation and sacrament. It is important for single people, young couples, and newlyweds to see what enduring love and sacrifice look like.
Each February the diocese celebrates the gift and witness of marriage. Under the leadership and planning of the Office of Family Ministry all couples celebrating their 25th, 50th and 60th wedding anniversaries are invited to the Diocesan World Marriage Day celebration. It will be held Sunday, Feb. 12, 2023, at 3 p.m. at the Cathedral of St. Peter in Jackson, Mississippi. There will be a Mass followed by a reception. To register contact your parish office or go to www.jacksondiocese.org/family-ministry to register yourself. For additional information or questions, please contact Debbie Tubertini at the Office of Family Ministry at (601) 960-8487 or email debbie.tubertini@jacksondiocese.org.
May your commitment to your marriage be a great witness to the young people in your life just as those couples were for me all those years ago. This year I will be celebrating my first World Marriage Day as a newlywed. God willing, we will have many years to celebrate the gift of our late life vocation. Keep loving one another well. I know it is my long-term plan!
(Fran Lavelle is the Director of Faith Formation for the Diocese of Jackson.)
Our motherhouse is located on a large property in a tiny village in rural France. With its old stone buildings, expansive pastures, flower gardens and shaded pathways, it’s a gorgeously bucolic setting and the most peaceful place I’ve ever been.
During the year that I lived there I don’t think I heard a single airplane overhead, an emergency siren or even a car horn. The nighttime silence and dark, starlit skies were especially striking.
Looking up at the stars I felt the deep security of knowing I was enveloped by God’s love.
The memory of those starry Breton skies still quiets my soul and fills me with a sense of peacefulness in the midst of life’s inevitable difficulties.
Sister Constance Veit, LSP
What a contrast this is to the darkness enveloping our Ukrainian brothers and sisters this winter as their country continues to be bombarded on a daily basis. This darkness is not a blanket of security or prayerful serenity – although cries to God no doubt rise from it – but an inescapable cloud of fear and dread.
As I think of the people of Ukraine during this Advent season, I am reminded of the words of the prophet Isaiah about the people dwelling in darkness. (Is 9:2ff) This passage speaks of a burdensome yoke, a taskmaster’s rod, boots tramped in battle and cloaks rolled in blood.
This is harsh military imagery.
The people living in darkness are wounded and oppressed, like our Ukrainian brothers and sisters today. They desperately need someone to shine a light into the cold cellars and improvised bunkers in which they huddle.
They need a savior.
It is just after the winter solstice, the darkest point of the year, that we celebrate the coming of our Savior at Christmas. Isaiah proclaims, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Upon those who lived in a land of gloom a light has shone …For a child is born to us, a son is given to us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.”
In their icons Ukrainian Catholics and Orthodox Christians traditionally portray the Nativity scene as a black cave surrounded by jagged rocks. This inhospitable setting represents the cruel and sinful world into which Jesus was born.
From heaven a large star sends a single shaft of light to pierce the darkness and guide the viewer’s eye directly onto the baby lying in the manger. This babe is the light that will dispel all darkness.
An Orthodox monk reflecting on the Nativity icon wrote, “O God, upon whom will the light shine if not those who live in darkness? If I truly feel that I am in darkness, then I surely will seek the light.”
This insight helps us to understand that the miracle of Christmas is not automatic. We must realize our need to be plucked out of the darkness that surrounds us – we must intentionally seek the light.
For most of our contemporary world, Christmas is filled with bright lights, shiny baubles and excesses of every kind. It is difficult to quiet our hearts enough to seek the true light we so desperately need.
Perhaps an act of solidarity with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters can help us to clarify our priorities this Christmas.
Archbishop Borys Gudziak, Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia and the highest ranking Ukrainian clergyman in the United States, recently spoke at a meeting of U.S. bishops. He suggested that we open wide a window in our home, turn the lights out and sit there long enough to really feel the cold. This act of solidarity, he suggested, will help us to feel what the Ukrainian people are experiencing everyday as this war drags on.
May this simple gesture of empathy and solidarity inspire us to intensify our prayers for peace, that the light of Christ will truly pierce the darkness this Christmas – the darkness of sin and war enveloping our world, and the darkness that lurks in each human heart.
O Lord, God-Hero and Prince of Peace, how we need you! Come into our world anew this Christmas and dispel the darkness with your divine light!
(Sister Constance Veit is the communications director for the Little Sisters of the Poor in the United States and an occupational therapist.)
The Friday before Thanksgiving is a day of great rejoicing for many of our seminarians. For one thing, their Thanksgiving break has arrived and they’ll have a week to spend with family and friends and prepare for their final exams. That Friday is also the day of the annual bonfire at St. Joseph Seminary College. This tradition that goes back many decades and so many of our priests have taken part in it (including myself). The students at St. Joseph (which, because it is a Benedictine monastery, we know as St. Ben’s – confusing I know!) spend the early weeks of November gathering and stacking timber that has fallen around the
Father Nick Adam
property and then stuffing it with as much brush as they can. Thankfully there are 1200 acres of trees at St. Ben’s and usually a hurricane will have pushed through earlier in the fall and provided plenty of raw material. The night before the bonfire the students and faculty have a gathering to bless the fire and ask the Lord to make the next evening a time of fraternity and community that will build up the future priests of the church. Then on bonfire day the men from Notre Dame in New Orleans cross Lake Pontchartrain to join their younger brethren for a football game followed by a great dinner and the lighting of the fire.
My favorite bonfire memories were usually from the football game. It’s amazing how pumped up you can get to compete against another team when there is only one other team to compete against and you only play them once a year. I used to always play receiver, not because I was athletic, but because I was a good field spacer because I knew all the routes and I could open up the field for our more athletic teammates to get open. One time, our quarterback threw me a bone and tossed me a touchdown pass on 4th and goal from the 1-yard line. I was so honored that he trusted me in that moment, but when we talked about it on the sideline, he said — “that was 4th down? I thought it was 3rd or I would have never thrown that to you!”
Those moments are particularly fun for me to reflect on now that I am walking with our current seminarians. Their great memories will be different from mine, but I know that the Lord will give them the same encouragement from these events that I received. The fraternity experienced in seminary is special, and it has endured long after ordination. We have so much great support for our seminarians throughout the diocese, and that support doesn’t just help them learn about theology and liturgy, it gives them opportunities to build friendships that will help sustain their ministry for decades to come.
IN EXILE By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI It is not enough merely to have saints; we need saints for our times! An insightful comment from Simone Weil. The saints of old have much to offer; but we look at their goodness, faith, and selflessness and find it easier to admire them than to imitate them. Their lives and their circumstances seem so removed from our own that we easily distance ourselves from them. So, I would like to propose a saint for our times, Stanley Rother (1935-1981), an Oklahoma farm boy who became a missionary with the poor in Atitlan, Guatemala, and eventually died a martyr. His life and his struggles (save perhaps for his extraordinary courage at the end) are something to which we can easily relate.
Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Who is Stanley Rother? He was a priest from Oklahoma who was shot to death in Guatemala in 1981. He has been beatified as a martyr and is soon to become the first male born in the United States to be canonized. Here, in brief, is his story. Stanley Rother was born to a farming family in Okarche, Oklahoma, the oldest of four children. He grew up helping work the family farm and for the rest of his life and ministry he remained forever the farmer more than the scholar. Growing up and working with his family, he was more at home tilling the soil, fixing engines and digging wells than he was reading Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. This would serve him well in his work with the poor as a missionary, though it served him less well when he first set out to study for the priesthood. His initial years in the seminary were a struggle. Trying to study philosophy (in Latin) as a preparation for his theological studies proved a bit too much for him. After a couple of years, the seminary staff advised him to leave, telling him that he lacked the academic abilities to study for the priesthood. Returning to the farm, he sought the advice of his bishop and was eventually sent to Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Maryland. While he didn’t exactly thrive there academically, he thrived there in other ways, ways that impressed the seminary staff enough that they recommended him for ordination. Back in his own diocese, he spent the first years of his priesthood mostly doing manual work, redoing an abandoned property that the diocese had inherited and turning it into a functioning renewal center. Then, in 1978, he was invited to join a diocesan mission team that had begun a mission in Guatemala. Everything in his background and personality now served to make him ideal for this type of work and, ironically, he, who once struggled to learn Latin, was now able to learn the difficult language of the people he worked with (Tz’utujil) and become one of the people who helped develop its written alphabet, vocabulary and grammar. He ministered to the people sacramentally, but he also reached out to them personally, helping them farm, finding resources to help them and occasionally giving them money out of his own pocket. Eventually he became their trusted friend and leader. However, not everything was that idyllic. The political situation in the country was radically deteriorating, violence was everywhere and anyone perceived to be in opposition to the government faced the possibility of intimidation, disappearance, torture and death. Stanley tried to remain apolitical, but simply working with the poor was seen as being political. As well, at a point, a number of his own catechists were tortured and killed and, not surprisingly, he found himself on a death list and was hustled out of the country for his own safety. For three months, back with his family in Oklahoma, he agonized about whether to return to Guatemala, knowing that it meant almost certain death. The decision was especially difficult because, while clearly he felt called to return to Guatemala, he worried about what his death there would mean to his elderly parents. He made the decision to return to Guatemala, fired by Jesus’ saying that the shepherd doesn’t run when the sheep are in danger. Four months later, he was shot to death in the missionary compound within which he lived, fighting to the end with his attackers not to be taken alive and made “to disappear.” Instantly, he was recognized as a martyr and when his body was flown back to Oklahoma for burial, the community in Atitlan kept his heart and turned the room in which he was martyred into a chapel. A number of books have been written about him and I highly recommend two of them. For a substantial biographical account, read Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda, The Shepherd Who Didn’t Run. For a hagiographical tribute to him read Henri Nouwen, Love in a Fearful Land. We have patron saints for every cause and occasion. For whom or for what might Stanley Rother be considered a patron saint? For all of us ordinary people of whom circumstance at times asks for an exceptional courage.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)
She was selling her wares at a rural autumn festival – the hand-knitted scarfs, sweaters, baby clothes and blankets that she made to sell to those of us gathered around her table to admire her creations.
I had purchased a few things from her last year – for myself and for loved ones. So, I was glad to see that she was back. Patience is not a strong suit of mine. Hence, my admiration for those who take so much time to make something beautiful by hand is particularly great. This year, I bought a blanket knitted with some favorite colors in a joyful design.
Lucia A. Silecchia
There was a fortunate, brief lull in the activity around the table – interrupted only by a young woman who stopped by to buy a dinosaur hat that, somehow, she managed to wear with style. The chill in the air, perhaps, prompted this otherwise unlikely fashion choice.
In that interlude, I asked how long it took to make a scarf, or a baby blanket, or, yes – a dinosaur hat. The friendly artisan gave me her best estimates. But then she told me that it could take much longer because sometimes she found herself in the midst of a project, would look at it honestly, decide it was not right, unravel it and begin again.
I suppose it should not have surprised me that someone who created such beautiful things would have a bit of the perfectionist in her. Yet, it also struck me that it must be difficult to look at something that had taken so much time and effort to make and be willing to unravel it all and start anew.
I wonder, though, if there is great wisdom in having the strength to do just that. To make a change and to unravel errors, misplaced values and mistaken priorities takes grace and strength. To start afresh without clinging to the false starts of the past is a gloriously difficult challenge.
Perhaps, as the days shorten and another year is winding down, the knitter’s wisdom may have a place. When we start to look back at the year that is drawing to a close and prepare for the excitement of a new year with its fresh starts and resolutions, it is easy to tinker around the edges of things and make some small adjustments to the patterns of everyday life.
Yet, sometimes in life, there can be an invitation to do more and to make more radical new beginnings. I suppose that I would never have noticed if the blanket I bought had defects in it. “Pretty good” would have been good enough for me. Yet, it would not have been good enough for the talented woman who knitted it together. She knew that sometimes starting over was the best way to move beyond “pretty good.”
Maybe in this season of joyful hope and new plans, a prayer for the grace to unravel the old and begin again is a prayer worth praying.
A blanket, hat or sweater created from the unraveling of imperfect ones are beautiful things. Yet, we have also been promised that “whoever is in Christ is a new creation.” 2 Cor. 5:17. I have to think that a newly created son or daughter of God is far more beautiful.
So, with gratitude for the good example of a knitter willing to unravel the old and reweave the new, I hope she is an inspiration to do the same and remake our ordinary times.
(Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Research at the Catholic University of America. “On Ordinary Times” is a biweekly column reflecting on the ways to find the sacred in the simple. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.)
My great-grandfather, a refugee from the devastating famine in Ireland, came to Nebraska to farm. Generations later, I grew up on that farm.
I have roots – literal and figurative – in the land he purchased, a very small acreage of which I still own. These roots help me to identify with the farming images of the Gospel. Jesus lived in a largely agrarian economy.
Sowing, reaping, noticing weeds along the roadside – this was Jesus’s world. He saw sheep grazing on hillsides, fishing boats plying the waters, full measures of grain being pressed into laps. He knew the familiar smells of manure, and the fishy odor of a catch being unloaded. Jesus lived in an earthy, messy, tactile world.
Effie Caldarola writes for the Catholic News Service column “For the Journey.” (CNS photo)
So, the other day when the Gospel reading was about the man who was harvesting so much grain that he decided to tear down his barns and build bigger ones, I could identify.
I’m familiar with the language of grain prices, yields (how many bushels did an acre produce), the perennial worries about hail and drought.
And I certainly know people who have built bigger barns. We might call that success or business acumen, and sometimes it is.
But in the reading from Luke 12, Jesus couches his story about the rich man who built bigger barns as a story of greed. Why?
First of all, notice how often Jesus rails against hypocrisy and greed. These are the social sins he cares deeply about.
Jesus lived among the poor, in a society that offered no “safety net.” The rich grew richer without fair taxation, a story familiar in America today.
So what’s the problem with the successful farmer? I don’t think his ample harvest is what Jesus decries.
No, instead it’s his attitude toward wealth and his inability to see the bigger picture of his own life.
In Jesus’ parable, the rich farmer dies and is called to account for his life that very night, after his big barns are built and he’s feeling flush. What good is his wealth to him now? All of us will face that day.
Jesus says, “Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God.”
He adds, “Take care to guard against all greed, … for one’s life does not consist of possessions.”
Stuff. We Americans have an enormous amount of stuff, and yet we always want more. We rent millions of storage units for our possessions, and yet we want more.
It’s a spiritual challenge, especially with the excess and consumerism of an American Christmas approaching.
It’s normal to save and plan for retirement. And yet, how often do we obsess about it?
Like the greedy farmer, we yearn to eat, drink and be merry – when we have “enough.” But what is “enough”?
Our church proclaims a “preferential option for the poor.” This term was first used by Father Pedro Arrupe, leader of the Jesuits, in 1968. St. John Paul II wrote of an “option for the poor” in his 1991 social encyclical “Centesimus Annus.” This concept runs throughout Hebrew and Christian Scripture.
Does it run through our lives? Do we vote with this concept in mind? Do we give, not just from our excess, but sacrificially, to the Lord through his poor, first? Do we feed the hungry? Welcome the refugee, like my great-grandfather? Clothe the naked?
When Jesus tells us to “take care,” I think he wants us to understand how short life is and how much better our lives and world could be if we lived simpler, more generous lives in every way.
(Effie Caldarola writes for the Catholic News Service.)
By Bishop Joseph R. Kopacz, D.D. This year in the Catholic Church marks the 20th anniversary of the Dallas Charter, when the American Catholic Bishops through the charter document and its essential norms “promised to protect and pledged to heal,” committing the church to safe environments for our children, young people and their families. Because of our sins and crimes, justly, as an organization, the church has been in the crucible, and the purification continues. Yet, the experience of the past twenty years has shown that an organization’s culture can be transformed when best practices are put in place and all in the organization are required to abide by them. In the church, this includes all the ordained, professed and baptized who work with children.
Bishop Joseph R. Kopacz, D.D.
Over the past twenty years new allegations and actual proven cases of abuse are far and few between. Even one case is one too many, but we have learned how to protect in our church programs and gatherings. Moreover, the pledge to heal comes from the heart of Jesus Christ because we are his body, far more than an organization, who hunger and thirst for healing and peace for all who have been so unjustly harmed by wolves in sheep’s clothing. This Gospel imperative must be at the center of all that the church does on the road back to the abundant life Jesus promised to all believers.
For all in the church and in the world who are steadfast in their love for children’s safety and flourishing, we can rejoice in the recent declaration of the United Nations.
On Nov. 10, 2022, the General Assembly declared Nov. 18 as the World Day for the Prevention of, and Healing from Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Violence. The resolution, which was sponsored by Sierra Leone and Nigeria and co-sponsored by more than 120 countries, was adopted by consensus and a bang of the gavel by the assembly’s acting president, which was greeted with loud applause. Following the action, H.E., Archbishop Gabriele Giordano Caccia, Permanent Observer of the Holy See United Nations, New York addressed the Assembly expressing appreciation for the UN’s action, and the full support of the Vatican State for the newly adopted World Day.
Over 50 individuals including leaders of prominent child welfare and advocacy organizations, and survivors of child sexual abuse (CSA), including several who experienced abuse by clergy, joined H.E. Fatima Maada Bio, the First Lady of the Republic of Sierra Leone, a survivor of child marriage, as she addressed the General Assembly urging action. “Child sexual abuse is a global public health crisis. We must acknowledge this problem, and take every necessary action to protect our children, especially our girls, from this tragic human condition.” Her eloquent, impassioned speech was greeted with a round of applause, and cheers from survivors in the gallery.
Mark Joseph Williams, an abuse survivor, speaks during a Nov. 15, 2022, session of the fall general assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore. (CNS photo/Bob Roller)
“Child sexual abuse is one of the greatest violations to human dignity, one can suffer,” said H.E. Ambassador Alhaji Fanday Turay. “The World Day for the Prevention of, and Healing from Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Violence is a critical step in bringing institutional recognition to this horrific childhood trauma. Too many victims of child sexual abuse are suffering in shame and silence. Many live anguished lives. By adopting this Resolution, we can provide a platform for all nations and civil society to mobilize and take actions to protect children from this tragedy.”
“We promoted the World Day to increase awareness of the actions all governments can take to prevent abuse and bring healing to survivors,” said Dr. Jennifer Wortham, a researcher at Harvard who founded the Global Collaborative, the survivor led network that led the international advocacy campaign to launch the world day. Wortham’s brothers are clergy abuse survivors, and Wortham shared that they have struggled with the effects of their abuse for their entire lives. “The World Day will help my brothers and all survivors of child sexual violence to know that the world cares about them, that they matter, that what they experienced was unjust, and that healing is possible,” said Wortham.
Finally, the world has spoken, and this is a victory for us all,” said Mark Williams, clergy abuse survivor, and advisor to the Archdiocese of Newark. “This day has been extraordinary, I am filled with awe, and peace.” At the Bishop’s recent meeting in Baltimore, Williams addressed the assembled body along with Cardinal Joseph Tobin, his Archbishop of Newark, N.J. to encourage the bishops that the Lord can make a way where there is no way. Healing, hope, and a new dawn are God’s desire for all in the church, especially the victims of sexual abuse.
Williams and Cardinal Tobin’s witness and friendship from the center of the church, the United Nations declaration, and a growing world-wide commitment to human flourishing on behalf of children and young people make this Thanksgiving an extra special day of gratitude in our nation and in our world.
JACKSON – Cemeteries are fantastic, visual archives. The history of a community, a church, a family is literally written in stone. In a few short phrases, a person’s life is summed up: “Devoted Mother,” “Beloved Son,” “Christian, Southern Gentleman,” “Faithful Wife.” Often it is a favorite scripture verse such as John 3:16 or a favorite poetry line such as “horseman pass by.”
Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman, FSPA, asked that the words “she tried” be on her tombstone. William Faulkner has “Belove’d Go with God” on his marker. One poignant one I have seen is “In the end it all comes down to one word, Grace.” And we all have that person in our family who warrants the “I told you I was sick” epitaph. As Catholics, we like to see R.I.P. on a grave for requiescat in pace or rest in peace.
Currently, the chancellor’s office is assisting in an inventory of Catholic cemeteries in the diocese. We have a listing of all the parish connected cemeteries, but often when a chapel or mission church closed decades ago, small cemeteries can be left off of the registry. We welcome any information on these locations.
JACKSON – Mary Woodward uses a pickaxe to assist in digging a grave at Chapel of the Cross Episcopal Church in Madison County. On left, Woodward left Bishop Joseph Latino’s favorite flower on his gravesite in the Bishops’ Cemetery next to the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle in Jackson. (Photos courtesy of Mary Woodward and Joanna Puddister King)
In our diocese, we have several Catholic cemeteries dating back to the early 1800s. Paulding St. Michael, the second oldest parish in the entire state, has a beautiful cemetery filled with founding family members. There is a forest of bamboo standing 30-feet high that surrounds much of the back of the cemetery. Not long ago, St. Michael parishioners with the advice of Mississippi State’s Extension Service invested in a barrier to keep the bamboo from spreading farther into graves. They also built a fence around the graveyard to keep the occasional nocturnal burial from occurring as can happen in small country cemeteries.
It is fitting we are doing this during the month of November. November is the month to remember the dead in our Catholic faith. It opens with the Solemnity of All Saints where we honor all those ordinary people in our lives who were saints to us. The next day is All Souls in which we honor the dead and, in many traditions, decorate graves and have picnics in cemeteries.
The Bishops’ Cemetery on the Cathedral grounds is right across the street from the Chancery. Each year we place flowers on the graves of Bishops Richard Gerow, Joseph Brunini, William Houck and Joseph Latino. This year, as we positioned the roses and sunflowers, I was able to reflect on these men and the act of assisting in burying three of the four.
Because of the location and design of the Bishops’ Cemetery, the graves are hand dug. This is a very arduous task which takes a team of gravediggers many hours to complete.
Burying the dead is a corporal work of mercy and we all have in some way participated in burying the dead by planning funerals, being present for the family, celebrating the funeral Mass, bringing food to the repast. But actually digging the grave with a shovel and pickaxe is a profound way to fully immerse oneself in the act of mercy.
Recently, I participated in two such acts. My brother is head of the gravedigger’s guild at Chapel of the Cross Episcopal Church in Madison County. He invited me to join in for a dig in August and then again last week.
The cemetery at the Chapel dates back to the mid-1800s and is on a serene piece of property off Hwy 463. The congregation has never allowed equipment onto the property to dig graves. All the graves have been hand dug and the guild coordinates the digging. It is seen as a unique ministry to the family of the deceased – an act of love.
My brother had marked the grave and at 4 p.m., the top sod was removed and set aside, then the team began making its way through soil, clay, roots and the occasional brick down into the cool, damp earth. The shovel crew would give way to the pickaxe crew, who would break up a few more inches of terra firma for the shovellers to get back in and remove. Eventually there is room for only one in the grave at a time. All stand around in support waiting to relieve the current digger by pulling her/him out and the next digger goes in.
This past week, as we dug down to the target depth, the family of the deceased, along with those who had come to pay their respects at the wake service, ventured over to the dig bringing food for the guild and chairs to watch the completion of act. Family members even participated in helping to dig, climbing down into the grave of their loved one and shoveling out clay.
At the end of the dig, the grave was blessed, and libations were passed around in a shared bottle as the deceased was toasted by the team and the gathered assembly. All of this took place under God’s watchful November sky.
As we continue this journey through the month of the dead and we pray for our deceased loved ones, let us be reminded of the sacred places where we bury our family and friends. These are true archives of our communal life and of lives well-lived awaiting the resurrection of the dead – a collection of short epithets giving a permanent record of and an eternal glimpse into those lives.
(Mary Woodward is Chancellor and Archivist for the Diocese of Jackson.)
