Knights of Columbus

Greeting Brothers and Families,

Spring is around the corner and Easter Season is upon us.  Let us all make this season of Lent extra special.  Try to make this year a true period of self-examination to identify our strengths and weaknesses so that we can improve.  Let us also pray for the conversion of sinners, to pray for those who've fallen and to pray for the strength to lift them up.

This spring season also finds the Council's future charitable donations a concern due to Bingo's limited income.  The cause for this is many, i.e. low attendance, non-smoking law went into effect, the struggling economy, etc.  What my concern is that the Council stays financially stable, which I believe will, due to the fore-handedness of our Council's fathers who put policies and procedures into effect to keep our financial reserves safe.  To that end, I ask your prayers and God's hands to guide our budget committee in making prudent decisions to get the Council through these difficult financial times.  Furthermore, I want to give a special thanks to Lou Stella and Paul Simard, the Council's Bingo Managers, for coming up with innovated ways in Bingo practices to get us through these struggling financial times.

The Blitz is on for membership recruitment!  At the February Council Meeting, Brother Bill Bamford handed out Form 100s to all the members in an attempt to get our current brothers to recruit new members.  I echoed the charge of recruitment at the March Council meeting.  If you know of any catholic gentleman that meets the criteria for membership in the Knights of Columbus, please obtain the prospects name and telephone number and have him fill out form 100.  Please turn all completed form 100s to Brother Bill Bamford for further follow-up.  Again, thank you in advance for your efforts here.

The Knights of Columbus State Convention is scheduled for May 2 - 4, 2008.  With that in mind, our reporting period for Service Program Activity Reports ended March 20th.  Our Council has submitted 34 Activity Reports summarized here into the five categories:  11   Community,  10 Council,  4  Church,  5  Family,  4  Youth.  You can all take pride in your accomplishment. Job well Done!

We are already into the last half of the Council year and it is time to begin considering the slate of Officers to lead the Council for 2008/2009. I have asked Brother Larry Belair to head up a Committee to put together a proposed slate for the coming year. Some of you will be contacted to ask about your willingness to assume certain positions.  I hope that you will consider being a part of the leadership team in this Council. With your help, we can continue to be one of the best Councils in the State.

God Bless, 

Joe Stafford

Happy Easter!  The Lord has raised it is true He has appeared to Simon, words which greeted the disciples as they returned to Cenacle from Emmaus so they could tell their story of recognizing

Jesus in the Breaking of Bread.

As we enter the Easter Season, the church has welcomed new members.  Our Parishes are preparing for the Celebrations of Confirmation and First Eucharist. Spring is trying to Spring and new life and growth is all around us. However, are we alive with this New Life? On Easter we renewed our Baptismal Promises and professed our Belief in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Are we truly living out these promises?  Have we used the time of Lent well  and rendered our hearts and opened them to the Power of God's Love or are we still waiting for the other guy to do it.

As members of the Knights of Columbus we are called to be that other guy, that sign of hope to the church and others.  May we live out our Baptismal  promises this Easter Season and beyond  in brotherly fraternity and charity.

Each Easter at the Vigil we journey from darkness to light, from ashes to flowers, from silence to shouts of joy, from death to new life. We journey through the story of the world, seeing it from God’s perspective. The journey that we are on began with creation, when God called the world into being, turned the seeming chaos into order, and brought forth a world where plants and animals, birds and fish filled the world, and God pronounced it good.

Then in time God brought forth human beings, man and woman - equal, created of the same stuff, even better, created in the image and likeness of God. Then God said that it was all very good, for now there was a creature on the earth who could freely choose to follow God, could freely choose to love in return for love. As the psalmist says, “The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.” Each spring we see this, we know this.

But we sometimes chose to follow ourselves, to worship the work of human hands, to turn against one another, and to sin. Thus the Egyptians enslaved the Hebrews, even tried to limit their numbers that they might be assimilated into Egypt as other peoples were assimilated. But God called Moses to lead his people to freedom. God did not forget his promises and so Moses led the people from slavery to freedom on that Passover night.

But the story does not end there, as Israel sometime strayed, and God let them be exiled that having nothing, they might return to God as their only hope. In the midst of their desperation, God says through Isaiah, “All who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; come without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk! Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what fails to satisfy?” Don’t we do that at times, running after this or that, thinking that it will make us happy? Finally, we turn to God, and God is there. God satisfies in a way matched by no other. God through his prophets promises us that he will replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. What turns our hearts to stone is un-forgiveness, anger, jealousy, greed, lust, sloth, and/or pride.

But the story does not end there, for God had an even better gift - the gift of his Son, Jesus. Even the sin that nailed Jesus to the cross could not stop the love of God. In fact, as we hear in the Exultet, that prayer sung by the Paschal Candle, God’s love for us is so great that the sin of Adam and our sins brought not a shameful death but “so great a Redeemer!” “This is the night when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death and rise triumphant from the grave.” This is the night which “casts out hatred, brings us peace, and humbles earthly pride.” Not only on the night of the Easter Vigil, but because of Easter, we can with confidence ask God to cast hatred and resentment out of our hearts.

We can ask God to widen the place of peace in our hearts. If we struggle with pride we can ask God to replace it with gratitude. If we bog down with a sense of unworthiness and shame, we can ask God to fill us with the awe of knowing that we are his sons and brothers of Jesus. We can look forward to eternal life, knowing that our loved ones who have gone before us are not dead but live in Christ’s resurrection.