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From The Grand Knight April 2008 Spring is HereI think we can all agree that the dead of winter is over and that spring is here. Just like our Lord Jesus who gave up his life for us, for our sins, died on the cross but then raised up on the third day in fulfillment of everlasting life, we have a new chance at following the Word of Our Lord and doing the deeds that are right and just. The flower that was dormant thru the winter now awakes to the warmth of the sun. If you were like that flower (dormant) now is your chance to awaken to the Lords Words and try follow in his footsteps. The flowers will bloom and show off all of their inner beauty in the coming months, but you too can bloom and show your inner beauty by your acts of kindness and good deeds. This month is our awareness month for helping citizens with mental retardation (intellectual disabilities).Across the entire State of Virginia, Brother Knights from every council will be collecting donations for KOVAR ( Knights of Virginia Assisting the Retarded), and here at our Council we will be doing the same. I urge each and every one of you to make an attempt to work a two hour shift collecting donations at one of the designated locations that our Chairman Alex Kulinowski has identified elsewhere in this newsletter. Alex will have sign up sheets at our next business meeting, and there will be a team of brother Knights that will be calling you to help with this endeavor. If we all chip in a little time this will be an effortless task with a very high yield of return. This is a task that you could and should include your family in on. More help is always appreciated, and we have come to learn that our young children usually are able to get the best donations out of the public. My two boys RJ and Matthew have been collecting money on the Virginia Beach Boardwalk by playing their Saxophone and Trumpet, and I will be handing in a good sum of money on their behalf at the April meeting. Please don’t stand back and think that someone else will get the job done. We have been a great supporter of KOVAR, and we should continue this support to the best of our capabilities. FYI the fruit of our labor doesn’t go unnoticed. This year thru the effort of Dana Nelson (Operation Hope) the State KOVAR Board has granted $20,000.00 towards the construction of a Handicap Playground to be built in one of the Hanover County Parks. Please get involved and give whatever time you can. When we work together as a team, great things can be accomplished.
Vivat Jesus! KOVAR News KOVAR Collection weekends – Our annual KOVAR collections will be held on Thursday through Saturday, April 17-19, at Ukrops, the ABC stores, and Walmart, and May 3 at Food Lion. We will also collect money after the masses the weekend of April 19-20. As always, we’ll need lots of people to help as store shift captains, money collectors, and counters. The times and dates where we’ll need help are:
As you all know, we’ve set a very high standard for KOVAR collections, so we need a lot of participation to maintain our track record. Please consider signing up for a couple of two-hour shifts, or to be a shift captain. Sign up sheets will be available at the next meeting. If you already know you’d like a specific shift, just call Alex Kulinowski. KOVAR Golf Outing Mark your calendars for this year’s KOVAR golf outing. It will be held on Thursday, May 22nd at Brookwoods Golf Course. We’ll need lots of help to grow the success we had last year. More details will be provided at the February business meeting. A Message from Deacon Chris on God's Way of Coming to Us In his article for February, Bishop Lori talks about God’s way of coming to us. The Church tells that the mystery of our salvation is not so much that we love God but that God loves us even before we are repentant, that God sent his only Son while we were still sinners. Paul tells us in Romans, 5:8, that “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” In the First Letter of John, 4:10, we hear “In this is love: not that we have loved God but that he has loved us…” He shows us his love in many ways. One major way God comes to us and shares his love with us is through the Word of God. Throughout Jewish history, God sent prophets, Kings and Patriarch’s to tell them how to live. We hear throughout the Old Testament that the word of God came to the prophets. He continually was present in the word that the prophets spoke to the people. He was also present to the people through his Word in the Law he gave through Moses, and in the covenant he made through the Patriarchs. God came to his people, and to us, in His Word made flesh. The beginning of John’s Gospel tells us “In the beginning the word was with God and the word was God” and then tells us “the word became flesh and dwelt among us”. We also hear in Scripture that “In the fullness of time”, he sent his Son to show us how to live. There is the story of the atheist who said he couldn’t believe in God because he couldn’t believe that an all knowing and powerful God would come to be one of us. Throughout the year, this man always put bird seed out for the birds. One very cold winter day he was watching some birds and he went to put me bird seed in the feeder but the birds would come near it. He couldn’t figure out why. He finally said to himself, “If I could only become a bird for a few moments I could show them to come to the feeder and tell them that it was okay.” In that moment, he realized that God had done exactly that. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the Word of God, came to us to show us how to live, to tell us that it was all right. In the Gospel for the third Sunday of Lent, cycle A, the Samaritan woman comes to faith not through a physical miracle, but through listening to Jesus, the Word of God made flesh. Her understanding that Jesus is the Messiah is gradual as she listens to the words spoken by Jesus. It is after listening to the word of God made flesh that she has the courage to call the others in the town to come and hear him proclaiming to them that he is the Messiah. God come to us in the scripture, in the person of Jesus Christ and can come to us in other ways in our daily lives. God comes to us in the presence of others, in our relationships with others and in our daily prayer. Since God is present to us, we in turn can be the presence of God to others. Some times, we just need to be cognizant of God’s presence in our lives so that we are able to share it with others. A Message from Deacon Chris on Our Response to God Bishop Lori asks us to consider our response to God’s presence in our lives, our response to faith. If we are truly responsive to God’s presence then we act, we respond to that presence. We can do nothing to earn the gift of faith, the gift of God in our lives. Faith is given to us freely. In the early Church, there was great discussion about faith and the ability to earn it. St. Paul tells us that faith indeed is freely given and not something we earn. Good works do not earn us this gift. However, Saint James tells us: “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?” Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself if it does not have works, is dead. Indeed someone might say, “You have faith and I have works.” “Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith by to you from my works. (James 2: 14-18) Our response to God depends on our knowledge and understanding of that faith. We cannot fully respond to something we do not understand completely. God has given us this gift through others. We first learned of our faith from our parents and even though we may celebrate our faith differently from our parents, the faith is the same. We also learned our faith from other adults. The basic tenets of our faith have not changed. The Church has developed their understanding of this faith over the past two millennia but it is the same faith James talks about in his letter. We continue to learn about our faith from the Church and the ministers of the Church ordained, religious, and lay. Just as we learned this faith from others, we are called to be “others” for those who come after us. Those who come after us will learn their faith from us, not just in what we say but also in how we act, what we do in response to our Faith. When I bless the children for their Liturgy of the Word at Mass, I refer to them as our most precious gift. My biological children are not in this group but I truly believe that all the children are our responsibility and our gifts from God. Whether these children our biological or not, they are all our children. We pass our faith on to them and most often, we pass it on through our actions. We all have the responsibility of passing on our faith to the children of our parish. As members of Redeemer and as Knights of Columbus, I think we provide excellent examples of Faith in action. The children are not the only ones to whom we pass along our faith. We also pass it on to other members of the Knights and other adults in the parish. We are all given Faith as a gift but we also have been given different gifts to use in putting our faith in action. We are called to use these other gifts in sharing the gift of Faith. “To those who have been given much, much will be expected.” If we are truly faithful then we will respond to God’s gift of Faith. To be able to respond fully we need to develop our gifts and the ways to use these gifts. We do this through prayer; study of our faith, reading the scripture and through the exercise of our faith, among other ways. By developing our gifts, we become more deeply attuned to God in our lives. We also become more aware of what God calls us to do and become better able to respond to God. It is often said, “What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.” To paraphrase that saying, “God’s presence in our lives, is God’s gift to us. Our response to God’s presence in our lives is our gift to God.” What type of gift do we return to God? Support our sponsors!
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