St Mary’s Knights of Columbus Blog (Council #4264) Updated: July 15, 2024

 Our Mission

Serve St. Mary’s parish and our community, help care for fellow Knights and their families, and work together to help men grow in faith and make us better men, fathers, sons, brothers, and friends. 

June 11 Business Meeting Notes

Fraternal Year 2024 – 2025 Budget -   Detailed budget for the fraternal year and will be distributed soon.  Your review and comment would be appreciated.

Need to plan for Parish Picnic September 14, which is also the day Bishop Beckman will visit our parish.

St Mary’s School auction – looking for ideas on a “package” that the Knights can offer and auction.  The offering could be a personalized cookout, smoked meat package, or some amount of some other type of labor that men can provide for the winning bidder.  Please propose ideas. 

If you are reading this blog, then you are already aware of its existence.  Please spread the word.  The goal is to communicate to current Knights and to give prospective Knights an idea of what we do. 

KofC State Kickoff Meeting – July 13 - Highlights

This year’s kickoff meeting was held in Nashville.  Tony and I attended via internet link.  While we missed the fellowship with other Knights, we saved many hours of driving and hotel expenses.  Here are the highlights:

1)        The Knights of Columbus is a Christo-centric organization.  Our primary goal is to serve God by spreading bringing men closer to Jesus Christ and inspiring them to work to bring others closer to our Lord and Savior.  To that end, we reviewed the 4 promises which defines the mission of the Knights in Tennessee, and a prayer that will help us stay focused on those promises.

2)        To achieve promise 1, we are looking to create programs and opportunities for all men of our parish to gather in prayer, faith formation, and fellowship.  These are the three elements of the Knights COR program.  Please volunteer to be part of the team helps get this off the ground.

3)        Building Spiritual Muscle Memory – prayer, study, and reflection needs to be an activity that becomes regular daily activity. 

Reflection:

The key message of the KofC meeting, and of our gospel reading on July 14  (Mark 6 7-13) is that spreading God’s word is difficult by yourself.  It becomes much more powerful when you have another person, or a team around you.  At the end of this posting is our Worthy Brother Deacon Jim Haselsteiner’s sermon from Sunday which reinforces this message.  Please take a few minutes to read, reflect, and consider what you and your brother Knights can do.

Upcoming Events

Monthly Business meetings -1st Thurs of the month, 7PM, St. Anne’s Hall (behind school)

    Next Meeting: Aug 1

Monthly Social: 3^rd Thursday of the month.  Location varies.  Wives are invited. 

Next Social :  Announcement forthcoming

Monthly Knights Gourmet Breakfast – featuring omelets, Eggs “Pope” Benedict, scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy, and pancakes. Spread the word: "It's not just pancakes anymore".  

    Next Breakfast August 18 - Beneficiary of our work: St Vincent DePaul Society

Other Upcoming Events / Help Needed

Please let John know if you are interested in setting up a monthly COR (prayer, formation, fellowship) event for all men of the parish.

Serve Burgers and Hot Dogs at Food Pantry during distribution – date TBD

Sell food and drinks at Catholic Center for Tree Streets Yard sale - Saturday Sept 7

Parish Picnic / Bishop Beckman Visit– September 14 – Knights will serve food 

Pet Show – early October

Trunk or Treat – late October

Pro-Life News

Tennesseans for Life Annual Dinner - Saturday Sept 28 - $50 per person.  Please contact Tom Egan (415-305-6293; Thomas@lucasvalley.net )  if you would like to attend

Take a few minutes and listen a new song cons
idered to be the Pro-Life anthem sung by Rachel Holt.

Rachel Holt - I Was Gonna Be (Official Lyric Video) (youtube.com)

Please also consider other media found at the following website:  Choice42

Opportunities to Grow Your Faith

Bible Study Tuesdays via Zoom.

Looking for suggestions on guest speaker

 

If you would like to learn more about the Knights of Columbus, please visit:

Join Us | Knights of Columbus (kofc.org)

Or reach out to us at Knights@StMarysjc.org

 

Homily July 14, 2024 Mark 6:7-13 presented by Worthy Brother Deacon Jim Haselsteiner

Today we heard about how God chooses people for particular missions within the Church and about how God chooses all of us who believe to give witness to Him.  

Do you ever feel or sense that you have been called by God or that God might be asking something of you? Many of us probably don’t or at least think much about it. But quite the opposite is true, God calls each one of us and invites us to follow Him and to proclaim His message to others.

A common theme in today’s readings for this Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time is God’s Choice and purpose for us as his disciples. They point out to us both the nature of the church’s mission and our calling as disciples of Christ.

They remind us that God’s choice of us, is not a product of chance, but a deliberate one. As such, today the Church provides us an excellent opportunity to ask ourselves these crucial questions: What is God’s purpose for choosing me as his disciple and am I fulfilling this purpose?

In our first reading, God chose a poor farmer Amos to prophesy in Israel’s northern kingdom. God had a purpose for choosing Amos. Amos was a simple shepherd and not corrupt like so many of the others. Amos faced much opposition from many so called prophets of the day. But he fulfilled God’s purpose for choosing him because God commissioned him to do so.

Most of us are very much like Amos, going about our own business and doing what we have to do to earn our living and get along in life. Like Amos, we too are called by the Lord to prophesy and spread the good news of our Lord. Perhaps not like Amos did, but in our own unique way.

By our baptism, we are each called to take up the role of priest, prophet and king.  And the role of the prophet is simply to proclaim the word that God has given to us. 

In the second reading, Paul reminds us that God chose us in Christ. He said;    “In him we were also chosen.”  He also reminds us why He chose us: First of all, “To be holy, and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ…”. This is the purpose of God’s choice of each one of us. In following God’s purpose, we too will become outstanding disciples for His mission.

Secondly, since God does not intend that a disciple is to live only for himself or herself, he requests that we reach out to others. That is, to develop a spirit of missionary work.

In today’s Gospel from Mark, Jesus tells us about the role of the twelve.  They are called.  They are chosen.  They are sent out.  They are given the mission to reach out to others with Christ’s good news of salvation.  Jesus selected the twelve from among His disciples and sent them out, two by two. These twelve are called “apostles”, as the word apostle means “one who is sent.” And why twelve? The number twelve is a symbolic number, representing the twelve tribes of Israel.

Christ instructed them on how to go about their mission, that they are sent to preach and that they share his authority to heal and to drive out demons. Wow, what a special privilege, but they only were able to accomplish it through their faith.

Jesus was very specific in His instructions to these apostles. He sends them in pairs, establishing his mission as a communal endeavor. He tells them to travel lightly, without food, money, or an extra set of clothes. By doing this they were to be dependent on the hospitality of others, just as Jesus depended on others to provide for his earthly needs. It was through their trust and perseverance that they performed the missionary work of the Church.

Jesus wants His mission to continue, and so he also sends us into the world as his disciples. Every Christian is sent out to bear witness to Christ, to bring his wisdom and his healing touch to those who are in need, spiritually and physically.

We too, like the first disciples, are not sent alone. Jesus has provided us with the community of the Church. Through our mission we work with others, to build a community of faith and invite others to share in it.

It would be so much easier for us if we relied only on the pope, bishops and priests to fulfill God’s mission of spreading the word and the joy of His Church! But that is not God’s intention. We all are the chosen people and the pope, bishops and the priests are here to help guide us and serve the whole Church.

It’s not an easy task and most of us often fail to fully trust God, that's when we fall into sin, give into our selfish tendencies, or let our fears override our faith.

Today Jesus is inviting us to renew that trust, to make a fresh start, and to reaffirm our commitment to follow him no matter what.

We are all invited to recognize our own calling and to seek to know what God asks of us in order to spread the Kingdom.  May we open our hearts and our minds in faith, knowing that God has chosen us to carry on His mission.

In this Mass, Jesus will be renewing his commitment to us - a commitment that never weakens, no matter what.

Let's thank him for that, and as we reaffirm our trust in him, know that we have been called and ask him to give us the strength we need to follow him faithfully every day no matter what.