Saturday, December 31, 2016

A PRAYER FOR THE NEW YEAR


"Do not look forward to the changes and chances of this life with fear. Rather, look to them with full confidence that, as they arise, God to whom you belong will in his love enable you to profit by them. 
He has guided you thus far in life. Do you but hold fast to His dear hand, and He will lead you safely through all trials. Whenever you cannot stand, He will carry you lovingly in his arms.

Do not look forward to what may happen tomorrow. The same Eternal Father who takes care of you today will take care of you tomorrow, and every day of your life. Either He will shield you from suffering or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it.

Be at peace then, and put aside all useless thoughts, all vain dreads and all anxious imaginations."


Saint Francis de Sales 
(1567-1622)

Friday, December 30, 2016

SOME DIOCESE OF KINGSTOWN LEADERS


Getting It Done in St. Vincent and the Grenadines
  
Some of the priests, deacons, Sisters and lay leaders of the Diocese of Kingstown



I've gotten to know some of these wonderful people in the last two years. The amazing thing is that there are others not in this picture.  

Thursday, December 29, 2016

AFTER ALL THIS TIME

THRIVING AFTER FIFTY PLUS YEARS

The just shall flourish like the palm tree,
shall grow like a cedar of Lebanon. 
They shall bear fruit even in old age,
they will stay fresh and green. 
Psalm 92:15

My sister, Brenda, gave me this plant 50 years ago while I was in the seminary. I kept it for four years and then when I left the seminary in 1970, I gave it back to her. She has kept it going ever since and has divided it between her two daughters. It's still going and looks as healthy as ever! 





Tuesday, December 27, 2016

SPIRITUAL READING AVAILABLE


Homilies, past and present, can be found on this blog. Present homilies will appear as posts on this blog very soon after they are given. For a list of printed homily collections, click on the LINKS on the right and scroll down to MY BOOKSTORE. There you will find past homilies and other spiritual reading material. Under LINKS, scroll down to MY COLUMNS IN THE RECORD to access my weekly column, An Encouraging Word. 

DAILY MASS READINGS can be accessed each day by clicking on that link under LINKS on the top right hand column.  

Sunday, December 25, 2016

CHRISTMAS HOMILY



CHRISTMAS
2016
“If It Isn’t Messy, It Isn’t real”
Rev. J. Ronald Knott



She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger.
Luke 2:7



I have a saying, “If it isn’t messy, it isn’t real.” If you listen to the Christmas story closely, you will soon realize that it is one of the messiest stories you can imagine. This story isn’t cute or sweet. It was more like one disaster after another. There is the pregnant, unmarried Mary and her soon-to-be husband, Joseph. About the time this birth was to take place, Joseph and Mary were required to take an eighty-mile long donkey ride to register for the census - to the backwater village of Bethlehem. Away from home, Mary goes into labor with no place to give birth, but a barn and no place to lay her baby, but in an animal’s feed box. The only people to rejoice with this young couple were a bunch of smelly shepherds. Shepherds were despised by religious people of those days, not only because they were considered “low life,” but also because they were the “un-churched” of those days. From what we read, the birth of our Savior was a disaster on all fronts, one of the messiest stories imaginable.

If Mary and Joseph had been at home, all their Jewish neighbors and friends would have gathered outside the home to await the birth with musical instruments. When they would have announced, “It’s a boy!” they would have struck up the band. Luke, knowing that this was not just another Jewish boy’s birth, but the birth of God’s son, has a multitude of singing angels from heaven wrap their wings around this pathetic scene to welcome this long-awaited birth. The bottom line of this messy story, Jesus deliberately identified himself with the “little people,” “humble circumstances” and the messiness of this world.

Luke, who brings us the Christmas story that we are all familiar with, is a champion of the “underdog.” The heroes of his stories are mostly the “losers” and “marginal people” of society: women, children, foreigners, the sick, the unchurched and the poor. The Christmas story simply reflects his theology that Christ came for all people, including people the connected of this world never imagined and God’s love will not be restricted to the few, no matter what the church or state says.

When Jesus grew up, the statement that the circumstances of his birth made, was spelled out in detail by his preaching and actions. He “welcomed sinners and ate with them.” The lost sheep is sought out. The prodigal son was welcomed home. The good and bad alike are invited to his wedding feast. His workers all received a full days pay, no matter when they started working.

One of the best compliments I ever got as a pastor, was one I got one Christmas when I was pastoring the Cathedral Parish. A man told me that the congregation at the Cathedral reminded him of the “Island of Misfits Toys” from the “Rudolf, the Red-nosed Reindeer” Christmas special. The “Island of Misfits Toys” was, of course, that special island where broken toys could go to be repaired so that they, too, could be part of Christmas. As most of you know, we specialized in welcoming marginal and fallen-away Catholics back to the Church. I never felt more like a true pastor than I did in those days. I never felt that I was acting more like Jesus, living the message of Christmas, than I did in those days.

Even though the Christmas message is over 2,000 years old, it seems that the world still doesn’t get it! Because reality is messy, there are some people in the world, and even in the Church, who react to all the messiness of life, not by embracing it, but by running from it. Religions seem to be all going back into their corners and making enemies of each other yet again, a sort of a “God loves me and not you” approach. Jews, Moslems and Christians cannot get along! Even some scared Catholics are trying once again to take back all that openness we were famous for just a few years ago! Instead of tearing down fences, they are committed to building them back!

Regardless of what people do or believe, I am convinced more than ever this Christmas that the bottom line of this annual celebration is the unbelievable love God has for all people, yes all people. That’s why smelly shepherds, young refugees, curious foreigners and various “nobodies” have major parts to play in this great story! 

Friday, December 23, 2016

I'M GOING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS - FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 50 YEARS!

       


I AM SO EXCITED! I CAN'T WAIT!

I will be celebrating the 6:30 pm Mass on Christmas Eve. 



My beloved parish church was built in 1855. The parish started in a log cabin in 1818. 
After a second log cabin church, the present church was built. 



Some of my best memories of Christmas were Midnight Masses when the choir sang "O Holy Night!" 



The way I remember it as a child. 



How it looked at my First Mass on May 17, 1970.
My parents are in the front row, left. My grandmother is behind them in the dark hat.
Some of my sisters and brothers are in the front rows on the right.   
Five of the priests are dead.   


Wednesday, December 21, 2016

DOCTOR WHO? KNOTT AGAIN!


HONORED FOR SURE

The Bellarmine University Board of Trustees  voted unanimously on September 6, 2016 to award me an honorary doctorate degree. 
  
It was awarded last night at the December 21, 2016 graduation ceremonies.  



Bellarmine University Board of Trustees



Dr. Doris Tegart, Interim President, places the Doctoral hood over my shoulders. Dr. Melanie Prejean Sullivan, Director of Campus Ministry, assisted in adjusting the hood.



Dr. Tegart handed me the diploma.






BELLARMINE UNIVERSITY
December 21, 2016
Commencement Address
‘A Hopeless Case?”
Rev. J. Ronald Knott
  
I was completely shocked and honored when I got the call that I was going to be awarded an honorary doctorate by this University. After seventeen years of relishing being a campus minister here, I had retired from Bellarmine University back in the spring, retired from St. Meinrad Seminary the year before that, retired from the Archdiocese of Louisville a little before that and I have been collecting Social Security for about a year before that. After all that retiring and collecting, I thought I was finished.  I thought that all I had left to do was to find a place to die – hopefully in a socially acceptable situation!

I am not the type to get awards like this. Oh, I have won a couple of awards in the last few years, but not enough to invest in a trophy case just yet. I am not a million-dollar donor. I am not a successful businessman or well-known politician. I didn’t graduate in the top of my class and I didn’t invent anything. There are no buildings or streets named after me. I was the MC at a Crater Lake National Park beauty pageant once, but I have never won one personally. Even Don Knotts had an “s” at the end of his name and I don’t. I am not a Monsignor like Father Horrigan who started this place. I am simply a priest from a humble background who has ended up amazed to be where he is today -  all because of God’s amazing grace, my own unrelenting determination, the help of a whole lot of good people and a dab of luck. 

If I were to list my greatest accomplishment, it would not be any of the things listed in my introduction, it would be overcoming crippling bashfulness to become an international speaker, in eight countries on well over one hundred occasions! From stages like this, I have looked into the eyes of more Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops and priests than is healthy for one person! Yes, I have stood and talked in front of all those clerics, without batting an eye, usually a week at a time, and lived to talk about it!  I have preached in front of thousands and thousands of Catholics, people from other faiths and people of no faith at all.  From the feedback, the thing I am consistently known for is my simple, direct and straightforward speaking style.  I may not be the best speaker in the world, but I do know how to do “short and sweet,” so here goes!

All of you can listen in, and hopefully get something out of this, but tonight I want to speak directly to you graduates who struggled to get here today. Yes, I admire the winners of awards and scholarships and I congratulate them, but those of you who really struggled are my kind of people and I want to share a bit of what I have learned, especially with you! Yes, I do hope it will also be helpful to everyone here, in one way or another. 

I grew up in a Walton’s Mountain kind of town down in Meade County. I am John Boy, the first in my family to graduate from college. I was told almost every day as a child that I would never amount to a hill of beans. When I flunked the altar boy test in the second grade, sweet Sister Mary Ancilla told me that I was a good kid, but predicted that I would, in her words, “never be any good around the altar.” When I wanted to come up here to Louisville, out of the eighth grade, to the now-closed St. Thomas Seminary on Old Brownsboro Road, my pastor reluctantly filled out the papers, but predicted that I would not last till Christmas! After limping through my first year of seminary, the head priest called me into his office to tell me that he was sending me home, calling me, to my face, a “hopeless case.”  I had to beg for another opportunity. (To get through the seminary, you need to get good at groveling! My groveling career was launched that very day!) His last words to me were to call me “a ball and chain around his leg for six years!”

 Even when I completed four years of high school seminary, four years of college seminary and four years of graduate school seminary, on the day of my ordination, a woman cornered me at the reception and asked how long I had gone to school. When I answered “twenty, counting grade school,” she stepped back, gasped, and said, “My God, you could have been something!”  Graduates, I feel like I have been swimming against the stream all my life!

Friends, here is my point! In the words of W. C Fields, “It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to!”  As a graduate of the “School of Hard Knocks,” from which I have three earned Doctorates, I have learned that if you want to get on in life, you have to do two things. First, you need to shut out those negative discounting voices of the people around you. Second, and even harder, you need to shut out that negative discounting voice in your own head. Henry Ford said, “Those who believe they can and those who believe they can’t are both right.” Marianne Williamson said, “It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us!”

The 12 years it took for me to get to priesthood was a piece of cake compared to the 47 years of staying in the priesthood! In almost every assignment I have had as a priest, I have been told by those who were there before me “not to expect any results” because “nothing can be done” because of “this or that” reason. I deliberately chose not to believe any of them and I have seen both small and large miracles in most of those places, not because I am some kind of miracle worker, but simply because I refused to believe their negative predictions, as well as those my own mind tried to invent. I have learned that people declare certain situations, other people and themselves “hopeless” because it is easier that way. If you declare situations, other people or yourself “hopeless,” you don’t have to do anything!  Nobody expects you to do anything about “hopelessness!” Here is another quote from George Bernard Shaw that has guided me over the years. “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.”

One of the most useful things I learned from my tough childhood is that “there has never been a rescue party out looking for me” so I have needed to practice self-rescue. To do that I have learned to be imaginative and creative and look for alternatives, rather than look for someone to blame or someone to fix it for me. Another of my very favorite quotes, one I used regularly in Bellarmine Baccalaureate homilies, is also by George Bernard Shaw.  “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” 

All you, “barely made its,” listen up! One of my very favorite things to do is to walk down the hall way at my old seminary, where they hang the class pictures. I like to stop at the year 1970, the year I graduated and was finally ordained a priest. Some of the biggest brains and jocks, the ones that most of us could never measure up to, the ones everybody “made over,” bombed out a long time ago and some of us ugly ducklings, in a classic “tortoise and hare” scenario, are now swimming with swans! Maybe you have the heard the joke about what they call the person who graduated at the bottom of the class in medical school? They call him or her “Doctor!” As Yogo Berra said, “|It ain’t over till it’s over!”  So I say to you, it ain’t over till it’s over, so be forces of nature, not feverish selfish little clods of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to make you happy! Claim you power! Take the road less traveled! Believe in yourself! Dare to dream! Work hard! Be determined! Remain focused! If you do that, then good luck will find you.

Remember! “It’s not what they call you, it’s what you answer to!” “Those who believe they can, and those who believe they can’t, are both right! Maybe someday in the distant future, Bellarmine University will give another really nice award like this to yet another former “hopeless case” who “could have been something.” Maybe that “someone” will be you!

To close, let me quote a few lines from the song “Defying Gravity” from the musical WICKED.

I'm through accepting limits
    'Cause someone says they're so.
Some things I cannot change
But till I try, I'll never know.

To those who ground me,
Take a message back from me!
Tell them how I am defying gravity -
I'm flying high, defying gravity.

And soon I'll match them in renown
And nobody in all of Oz -
No wizard that there is, or was,
Is ever gonna bring me down!


Remember graduates, they don’t call this a “commencement” for nothing!  



PRE-COMMENCEMENT PHOTO 
LEFT TO RIGHT
Dr. Melanie Prejean Sullivan, Director of Campus Ministry, with whom I worked for seventeen years.
Dr. Doris Tegart, Interim President of Bellarmine University
____________________________________________________________


DOCTOR OF MINISTRY
in 
PARISH REVITALIZATION
1981

 McCORMICK (PRESBYTERIAN) SEMINARY
Chicago, Illinois




I was much younger (thirty-six with a beard and long hair) when I got my Doctor of Ministry degree from McCormick Presbyterian Seminary in the Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago. Scarlet (outside of the hood) is the color for ministry degrees. McCormick Seminary's school colors are blue and white (inside of the hood). Three stripes on the sleeves signify doctorate degrees. 






I attended, and prayed at, over thirty Bellarmine graduations from 1999-2017. I watched thousands of graduates accept their degrees. Every year, I watched the graduation classes grow, finally growing so big that spring graduations had to be moved out of Knights Hall and be held outdoors on the athletic field. I am so honored to be part of the Bellarmine University as the longest serving campus ministry in its history. Receiving an honorary doctorate is just the icing on one big delicious cake. 



The spring 2016 graduates are shown on the left side of this photo. This was what I thought was my last graduation ceremony.

Towering above the graduates (top right, just out of camera range) is my beloved Our Lady of the Woods Chapel where I had Mass every Sunday from the time it was opened till I retired last July. Before that we were in the small St. Robert's Chapel across from the theater in Wyatt Hall.






YET ANOTHER CHRISTMAS THOUGHT

Monday, December 19, 2016

SANTA VISITS SOME ISLAND KIDS



A GREAT BIG THANK YOU 
TO ALL WHO HELPED WITH OUR PART OF THE CHRISTMAS PROGRAMS FOR SVG KIDS*

*The program is still open. We are doing a children's computer camp this summer. 
jrknott@bellsouth.net  
1-502-303-4571


SANTA'S FIRST STOP ON ST. VINCENT

Santa (Fergal Redmond), Sister Nyra Ann, Bishop County and Adella Knights and Ancel Knights (behind the camera) visited Georgetown on the island of St. Vincent to take gifts to the children there.

Santa will make several other stops at schools and the diocesan Christmas party.  


People who read my Record column, inviting them to help make Christmas special for some kids who may have had to go without presents, were very generous. Here are just a few shots of Santa and a few of the many kids who received presents this year.  

That's my little friend, Daniel, with his tongue sticking out. He wanted me to hold him when I was down there. When I put him down, he latched onto my leg until I had to say, "goodbye." That's him again, below.








Growing up in Rhodelia, I also went barefoot most of the summer when I was at their ages.









Sister Nyra Ann holding one of her charges.



This little one was asleep in a playpen on the shaded porch when I arrived....



....but when he woke up from his nap, I got to be the baby sitter!

SANTA'S SECOND STOP 






Thank you, Sisters! Merry Christmas! 

I wanted to add a personal Christmas gift to the Sisters working on St. Vincent. They are so dedicated and they get very few perks for all their hard work with the kids on the island.



Some of the Sisters greeting the new Bishop County last February.

SANTA'S THIRD STOP 
a related Christmas program with our Santa

These little kids were obviously grateful for their presents even before they opened them!
You can tell from these little faces that Christmas is still a very special time of year down there! 
Oh, how I wish I could have been there! 








Look at all that ice cream! If she drops it, I'll be on it, for sure!"



"We are so excited, we can't stand it!"



"For me! Really?"



"I can't believe it! Just for me?"



"We've been waiting together all year!"



"Thank you so much, Santa!"



"Gimme that present!"




"Yes, Santa, I have been very good!"



"This is so cool!"



"I knew Santa would notice my hat!"



"I'm waiting - patiently!"



"I'll take that!"



"Maybe it's another cool hat!"



"We want identical toys because we are best friends!"




"Pleeeeeaaase!"



"Of course, I've been good! Now hand it over!"



"Whatever it is, it's bigger than I am!"



"I hope it's what I think it is!"



"Why does my brother always go first?"



"See, it pays to be good!"



This little girl was crying because she mistakenly thought Santa had forgotten her!



Sunday, December 18, 2016

ST. JOSEPH.- THE MAN WHO COULD CHANGE HIS MIND





Joseph  decided to divorce Mary quietly, but an angel appeared
in a dream and told him to have no fear about taking Mary as his
wife. When Joseph awake he did as the angel had directed him.
Matthew 1:18-24


When I talk about St. Joseph. I usually talk about St. Joseph's fidelity to God, even when he didn't seem to understand what was happening. When I arrived here as pastor in 1983, the 1970’s modernization of this space was wearing thin. The blank white walls were beginning to look off-white. The orange carpet was beginning to buckle and roll. The new statues of Mary and Joseph, even though good pieces of local art, were still  not being accepted.

Mary and Joseph were dressed in humble first century peasant clothes. Mary was stooped and wrinkled and brown. She was pictured as she might have looked in her old age – at the time she was assumed into heaven. Joseph stood with his mouth open like he was saying “uuuh” as if he never knew what was happening around him!

St. Joseph walked by faith and not by sight.  He never speaks in the gospel. Instead, St. Joseph, has become known as a "shut up and put up" kind of saint.

Yes, when I usually talk about St. Joseph, I usually focus on his fidelity to God even when he did not understand. However, this year, I want to talk about St. Joseph as a man who could change his mind. Some of us have made up our minds about things years and years ago and we are proud that we are not about to change them now. We may even think that our inflexibility is a virtue. St. Joseph teaches us that, to follow the will of God, we have to be able to change our minds.

Here's the short version of how St. Joseph changed his mind. Mary and Joseph are engaged to be married. Mary becomes pregnant before the wedding and tells Joseph that she conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph refused to believe it at first, and may have even showered Mary with some harsh words. He had made up his mind to go through a quiet divorce when he had a dream in which an angel appeared to him, confirming Mary's explanation and telling him not to be afraid to proceed with the wedding. Joseph woke up and changed his mind, proceeded with the wedding and accepted his new family.

 "Change your mind" is the very first challenge that came out of Jesus as he began his ministry. We read about it every first Sunday of Lent. “Metanoiete!” he says in Greek.   “Change the way you look at things! Change the way you see because God is up to something again.  To see what God is up to, it takes a radical change in the way you look out at things.”  By being able to change his mind and look at the Mary's pregnancy with new eyes, Joseph was able to see that he was actually part of a great plan that God had formed long ago -  not being duped by an unfaithful fiancée as it might appear.   

One of the many times I can remember consciously changing the way I looked at something in my life, as a priest,  took place two weeks after I was ordained. I had my heart set on being an associate pastor here is Louisville where I could enjoy all that a big city has to offer. What I got was an assignment in the “home missions” as far away from Louisville as I could get. I was angry, but I had to go. Then half-way down there, in Danville, I had a dramatic conversion in my thinking. It was obvious to me that I could to be there for 10 years, whether I was mad or not! I decided to change my mind and embrace the assignment. Since I didn’t get what I wanted, I decided to want what I got and to give it my all!  What I didn’t know at the time was, because I had changed my mind, it was going to be a great assignment. Because I decided to look for the blessings of that place, I found what I looked for! Because I chose to look at that assignment in a new way, my experience of the following ten years was a different one, one filled with fabulous experiences and opportunities. I shudder to think what my priesthood might have been like today, if God had not helped me change the way I saw things.

Through the years, I have learned a helpful lesson from St. Joseph - the ability to look at things in a new way, the ability to change my mind.  

Where are some of the places you need a new way of seeing in your life? Who are the people and what are the situations that you have been hoping would change to make life better for you? Why not change your experience of those people and situations by re-choosing how you see them?  Do you feel your children or spouse have let you down? Are you still grieving over a huge personal mistake you have made in the past? Did you lose a child or a spouse and can’t get over it? Do you feel you have been cheated, discriminated against or slighted and still fume inside over it?   Are you still waiting for someone to say they are sorry, give back what they took or take back something they said? Are you down on yourself and bitter about something in life?

St. Joseph can teach us that we can change all of that by changing the way we look at it and think about it! People say you can’t change the past. I am here to tell you that you can change the past. You can change it simply by re-choosing the way you think about it, how you want to remember it and what you want to believe about it.

St. Joseph, this Lent teach us how to change our minds, like you changed your mind!  




Saturday, December 17, 2016

LATEST "FOR THE RECORD" BOOK AVAILABLE

ADD  VOLUME XIV TO YOUR COLLECTION 


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Friday, December 16, 2016

HEEEE'S BAAACK!


RETURNING AFTER TWENTY YEARS




On December 4, 2016, I celebrated the 5:30 pm Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of the Assumption for the first time in twenty years - something I did most Sunday nights from 1983-1997. 

Since I am retired from Bellarmine University and St. Meinrad Seminary, I have been invited back to help out at Sunday Masses when Father Michael Wimsatt needs to be gone. 

I am helping out on Sunday mornings, Sunday nights and Monday noon as needed. 

My upcoming schedule is printed at the bottom of this page. 





Assisted by Deacon Christopher McDonnell.



UPCOMING WEEKEND SCHEDULE

December 18, 2016
9:3:00 am and 12:00 pm

January 8, 2017
9:30 and, 12:00 pm and 5:30 pm

January 15, 2017
9:30 am

February 5, 2017
12:00 pm

February 12, 2017
9:30 am and 12:00 pm

March 5, 2017
9:30 am and 12:00 pm  

April 16, 2017
9:30 am 

This weekend schedule brings us up to Easter. There will be several Mondays and maybe an additional weekend or two as schedules develop. As time goes by, we will continue to develop the schedule for the after-Easter season.