MESSAGE FROM STATE CHAPLAIN

Dear members of the Knights of Columbus, your family members, and people of God:

We are embarking on a three-year program to help us revitalize our Catholic Faith through our understanding of the Eucharist. The Knights of Columbus and the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops are working together to revive and strengthen our understanding of the Real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, which is the core of our Catholic Faith. The Mass is what we celebrate each Sunday that draws us to bring everything to the Lord, and then He gives Him-self to us as a gift, and sends us forth to proclaim the faith, hope and love of what we have received throughout the week. As Catholics, we are invited on this spiritual journey to renew within ourselves, why the Eucharist is so important to our own holiness and faith.

Father Peter Cameron, OP, wrote a meditation for Eucharistic Adoration that struck a chord with me. In this meditation, Fr. Peter writes about the Eucharist as “communicating.” Here there are two meanings, one is conveying information, and the other aspect of communicating is in “consuming.” The Eucharist is communicated to us in the manner of “eating” the Body of Christ at each Mass we attend. The Eucharist is also “communicated” to us via the faith we have to under-stand that Jesus wants to “commune” with us His love, peace, joy, faith, and hope. He wants to reveal these gifts in the very secret of our hearts. He wants to divulge His divine life in us through our “communicating” with the Eucharist and sharing ourselves with Him. The Lord is the only one who can do this because He is the Word made flesh, who dwells among us. When we engage in dialogue with God, when we engage in communication with God, we dis-cover two things. First, the power of God’s Word becomes alive as He tells us what we must do! God’s Word is rooted in Sacrament, in the Words of Institution that make Him truly present to us. Secondly, what is also conveyed is the deeply powerful gift of love that reaches to our very hearts. This love is brilliantly conveyed by the smile on our faces when we receive our Lord in the Eucharist and love Him wholeheartedly. Love is the universal language of the Eucharist and the amazing gift that animates and motivates all of us to live, move and have our being in Christ.

Encouraged by this “communicating” of love in life, and in the Eucharist, it becomes our duty to give witness to the divine fire of love we receive, as God continually “communicates” with us. As we are drawn to the table of the Lord and receive His Precious Body and Blood, we are also drawn to share His love with others. May we grow more deeply in “communicating” with our Lord in love, to be examples of loving wit-ness to men who want to know what makes the Knights of Colum-bus and our Catholic Church so strong in knowing how God loves and “communicates” with us.

Vivat Jesus!

Fr. Jim Caldwell

State Chaplain