The Beloved Community in Mississippi announces events for late summer and fall

by The Rev. Andy Andrews

Advent Retreat 2024 planned

The Beloved Community in Mississippi is excited to announce that Advent planning has begun! Please make plans to spend time with The Rev. Dr. Mark Francisco Bozzuti-Jones over the weekend of December 13-15. Fr. Mark is an Episcopal priest at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York City. Presently, he serves as the Director for Spiritual Formation at Trinity Retreat Center in West Cornwall, CT.

Fr. Mark will lead the Advent Retreat at St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church of the Ascension in northwest Jackson on Saturday morning, December 14. He is Jamaican and a former Roman Catholic Jesuit priest. He has a wide range of experience, including 14 years of Jesuit training and work as a missionary in Belize, Brazil, and Guyana. Mark is fluent in Portuguese. He is an award-winning author; recent books include God Created, Jesus the Word, The Gospel of Barack Hussein Obama According to Mark, The Rastafari Book of Common Prayer, Absalom Jones: America’s First Black Priest (2021) and Face to the Rising Sun: Reflections on Spirituals and Justice (2021).

Emmett Till Commemoration is August 31

As we become the Beloved Community in Mississippi, the spiritual discipline of memory work and truth-telling is empowering and strengthening. Hearing stories that break the heart can provide more room. In the Scriptures, God is constantly calling the faithful to remember. As Christians, we have faith and feel the risen Jesus with us.

Please consider joining the many to commemorate Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie, in the Mississippi Delta. The Emmett Till Interpretative Center is partnering with We2Gether Creating Change, the Emmett Till & Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument, and the Racial Reconciliation Taskforce for the Diocese of Mississippi to host this third annual memorial service. It is on Saturday, August 31.

For more information or a ride from Jackson, please email andrews@dioms.org.