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Mighty Mississippi menaces Delta region

15 May 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The readings for the Fourth Sunday of Easter--Good Shepherd Sunday--contain many shepherding allusions. Residents of the Mississippi Delta region need the assistance of a good shepherd to help them navigate flood waters from the swollen river that are cresting at near record levels this week. The river topped outTuesday at Memphis just inches short of the record set in 1937. Some low-lying neighborhoods were inundated, but high levees protected much of the rest of the city. The damage was estimated at more than $320 million, but an official tally won't be available until the waters recede. To the south there were no early figures on the cost of the devastation, but with hundreds of homes already damaged, "we're going to have a lot more when the water gets to where it's never been before," said Greg Flynn, a spokesman for the Mississippi emergency management agency. Downstream in Louisiana, inmates were filling sandbags to protect property in Cajun swamp communities that could be flooded if engineers open a spillway to protect the more densely populated Baton Rouge area. Fear was high across the region. "I went through [Hurricane] Katrina," said Lynn Magnuson, a New Orleans resident. "I would not wish flooding on anyone, and this city is the last place on Earth that needs any more high water." "After Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike--as well as the oil spill--Louisiana can ill-afford another large-scale disaster," said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D, La.) "Billions of dollars in property is at stake, not to mention the threat to human life." Source: Articles by Holbrook Mohr and Shelia Byrd for the Associated Press and CNN.com

flooding louisiana mississippi river floods good shepherd sunday memphis new orleans
It’s Plessy versus Ferguson no more

12 Jun 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Saint Paul offers members of the church at Corinth a powerful image of unity in this Sunday’s second reading, that of being “baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons.” The U.S. Supreme Court didn’t see it that way in its 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which upheld Jim Crow laws mandating segregation. Now, descendents Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson have started a civil rights education organization that bears their famous names. The descendent of the man who tested Louisiana’s law requiring separate railroad cars for whites and blacks and the great-great-granddaughter of the judge who upheld it initially met in 2004. “The first thing I said to her,” recalled Plessy, “was, ‘Hey, it’s no longer Plessy versus Ferguson. It’s Plessy and Ferguson.’ ” Ferguson's first reaction was to apologize. “I felt the burden of it, this great injustice,” she recalls. Plessy responded, “You weren’t alive during that time. I wasn’t either. It’s time for us to change that whole image.” They decided to launch the Plessy & Ferguson Foundation in New Orleans at a local spot called Cafe Reconcile. On Tuesday they celebrated the anniversary of Homer Adolph Plessy’s decision to buy a railroad ticket and sit in the “Whites Only” section on a June 7, 1892 train trip from New Orleans to Covington, Louisiana. It was part of an early civil rights organization’s carefully planned but fruitless effort to challenge the constitutionality of Jim Crow laws. It would take the Supreme Court more than half century to overturn those laws in its 1954 decision Brown vs. Board of Education. The new foundation seeks to highlight the historic moments in New Orleans’ struggle for racial equality and hopes to remind the public of the story behind the case. “I was not a great leader or a great scholar or any of those things,” Plessy said. “I’ve been a 30-year employee of Marriott as a bellman and happy with that job. But I have an obligation and a privilege to keep my ancestor’s history alive. What my ancestors dreamt about, I’m able to live.” Source: An article by Robert Barnes for the Washington Post

segregation keith plessey phoebe ferguson jim crow plessy ferguson foundation cafe reconcile brown vs board of education new orleans supreme court plessy v ferguson
Homily stories

01 Nov 2020 - Solemnity of All Saints, Cycle A

The humidity off the gulf made the New Orleans weather unbearable. The accompanying rain turned the outdoor dinner we had planned at the Court of Two Sisters Restaurant into a crowded indoor event. The presentations at the conference were lifeless. With one full day left, I looked forward to my getting home. I woke up that last day to sunny skies and a cool breeze. In short, it was a day tailor-made to skip the last talks and enjoy the sights, smells, tastes, and sounds of the city. They led me to a small church not far from downtown where a traditional funeral procession was starting to lead the congregation to the cemetery. The music was infectiously celebratory. I joined the crowd and found myself swaying (well, as much as my Midwestern body would allow) to the melody that dipped from deeply mournful and rose to grandly joyful. We were at the cemetery gathered around the coffin in too short a period of time. Silence fell over us like a cloud as the minister began to speak, his voice a whisper at first and then rising. He ended by reminding us that the deceased was now not just our mother, or sister, or auntie, or friend, or neighbor. The brass instruments started softly hummed until he shouted, “Now she is our saint.” The music exploded into “When the Saints Go Marching In.” I’ll never forget the saint I met in New Orleans at her own burial. Honor a saint you remember today, All Saints Day.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

Saints new orleans

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