This month is Rosary month, so I would ask all the Knights present to reach into their pocket and hold their Rosary aloft! Those of you who don’t have a Rosary with you, I would remind you of your promise made during your initiation to the Knights, a promise made in the silence of your heart, to carry the Rosary with you always and to pray it often. If you have lost your rosary see the worthy warden after the meeting and he can replace it with one from our degree inventory. If you did not lose it, try to remember to carry it with you. If you do, you will pray it more often.
Hopefully you all know how to pray the Rosary, you make the sign of the cross and pray the apostles creed, then on the first bead you pray an Our Father, followed by three Hail Mary’s for an increase in the three theological virtues, faith, hope and charity, followed by a Glory Be. Then you pray the five decades of either the Joyful, Sorrowful, Luminous or Glorious mysteries. These are followed by a Hail Holy Queen, and the Rosary prayer. Then if you are inclined, you offer an Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be for the intentions of the Holy Father. I wanted to focus tonight on the theological virtues for an increase in faith, hope and charity.
Increasing our faith makes sense to all of us and seems well placed at the beginning of this special prayer, as does hope. We all know that loss of hope can leave one in a desperate place, so praying for an increase in hope makes sense. The increase in charity, likewise makes sense to all of us as Knights. After all it is the defining virtue of our order.
We all see obvious signs of our brother Knights being charitable when we do coat drives for kids or homeless folks or raise funds for homeless veterans. These are great causes and obvious outward acts of charity that all recognize, but there are other acts of charity we can provide that don’t always generate immediate feedback.
Giving money is certainly one way to be charitable to your neighbor, but an even harder gift to give is your time. I can tell that you I have committed to some things that when the event comes around I am not a happy participant. When down in North Carolina on my farm, I was cantor for our parish and led the singing for all the masses all weekend. Meaning I had mass on Saturday evening at 4:30 PM, Sunday at 8:00 in our mission two towns away and 10:00 am back in our parish. If you ask my wife when she called me in from the field at 3:00 PM on Saturday afternoon, I was never very happy, but when I got home from mass I was always cheerful.
You may not think of attending this council meeting as an act of charity, but consider the other Knights who attend, maybe a new member who is trying to connect with others in the parish, or a brother knight whose company is under stress in this economy and facing uncertainty, or a brother whose family life is disrupting; seeing your faces and hearing your kind words of concern and support may help them keep their hope up.
So as we go forward through this month and work toward the end of our liturgical year, please pray your Rosary often and challenge yourselves to be more charitable with your time. Maybe volunteer to help out the council in one of the Grand Knights initiatives. You may find, as I have found over the years, that you are pleasantly rewarded for your service with increases in Faith, Hope and Charity. Pray on it and see where God leads you.