Friday, February 1, 2019

NEW AND RECENT BOOKS AVAILABLE


Hardly a day goes by that people don't tell me they miss my old column in The Record
Well, I have some good news! You can now own all 15 years of the columns! 

That's Right!
All 750 Columns Are Now Available in 3 Convenient Volumes.  


Need a Good Lenten Book? 
Get Your Copy Before Lent Starts!

Need a Laugh? 
A Book of Real Life Humorous Stories.

Need a good book on Personal Growth? 
This Book is For You!  





Go to MY BOOKSTORE  under the links listed on the right of this blogpost or go to Tonini Church Goods Store in Louisville, 



Tuesday, January 29, 2019

ANNOUNCING THE NEXT PHASE IN OUR CARIBBEAN MISSION WORK


PHASE TWO

WE ARE NOW READY TO ACCEPT MORE VOLUNTEERS

NEXT THREE GOING DOWN IN JULY FOR COMPUTER CAMP NUMBER TWO




Karen Crook of Supplies Over Seas



Tim Tomes of Supplies Over Seas 




Beth Kolodey, kids computer teacher, Jefferson County School System 








A partnership of the local bishop and professional level adult volunteers who want to share their talents, resources and connections with the work of the Church in the Caribbean country of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines for short periods of time: the diocese, the parishes, the schools, the orphanges, the nursing homes and various other needed targeted projects.

ANNOUNCING 

"TRAVEL FUND" 


IN SUPPORT OF OUR VOLUNTEERS

After four years trying to implement this dream, and now that we have the Pastoral Centre almost renovated, we are ready to recruit more volunteers. This year we want to focus on matching more professional volunteers with specific projects.

We need to establish a fund to pay part of the costs to get these generous volunteers down there and back, feed them while they are there and make sure they have what they need to carry out their projects.

It costs @ $940.00 per volunteer, round trip, to fly from Louisville to Miami and on to Saint Vincent. Another $300.00 would feed them while they are there and cover any incidentals on the way down and back. 
I PAY MY OWN AIRFARE AND EXPENSES BY LEADING PRIEST RETREATS IN CANADA AND THE U.S. AND LEADING PARISH MISSIONS. 

If you want to volunteer or you, your prayer group, your social club or your parish service ministry, would like help sponsor a volunteer, fully or partially, please contact me: 
 MAKE CHECKS TO:
St. Bartholomew Church - SVG Mission Fund
send to:
Father Ronald Knott
1271 Parkway Gardens Court #106
Louisville, KY 40217 
jrknott@bellsouth.net
1-502-303-4571

                      

New door to my newly renovated head quarters (bedroom and bathroom) in the Pastoral Centre



One of the seven newly renovated guests room where volunteers will be staying.

THE BEST NEWS EVER FOR THIS OLD MISSIONARY


As of last December 21, American Airlines now has a direct flight from Miami into Saint Vincent. No more stopping in Barbados! No more SVG AIR! No more LIAT AIRLINES!

Now I can go down with just one stop in Miami! This will take 75% of the stress out of a trip down there!

Alleluia!

  

SVG Airlines



LIAT - Leeward Islands Air Transport



New airport runway in Argyle on Saint Vincent, the main island in the country of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. 
 See map below.  






We now have 25 laptop computers in place and we are ready to expand out to an outer island.
This will be our second year to teach computers to kids.  



We hope to offer a "field day" of games and prizes for the kids of Saint Benedict and Bread of Life Homes for Children while we are there! 




We hope to keep collecting school supplies and receiving scholarship funds for the
kids at Saint Mary's School.  I am always amazed at how many kids are squeezed into such small rooms. God bless the teachers! They have a high success rate in spite of limited resources and space.



We hope to have a strategy meeting while we are there with the Ministry of Health people about another 40' shipping container of surplus medical supplies from Louisville.  



As you can see, Supplies Over Seas has plenty of surplus medical supplies to send to countries in need. This is only one of several rooms full. 

Sunday, January 27, 2019

PREACHING THAT MAKES YOU CRY.....FOR JOY, NOT FROM BOREDOM







   Ezra read plainly from the book of the law of God, interpreting it so that all could understand what was read. All the people were weeping as they heard the words of the law.
Nehemiah 8:2-10

As a preacher who takes his job very seriously, one of my heroes is the Prophet Jeremiah. Here is what he said about his own preaching. “When I found your words, I devoured them. They became my joy and the happiness of my heart. They are like a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones, I grow weary holding them in!” Another preacher hero of mine is Saint Gregory the Great who said, “The preacher must dip his pen into the blood of his own heart if he is to reach the ears of his hearers.” My friends, serious preaching is a lot like giving blood!

I have about 97% of all the homilies I have delivered over the last 50 years in hard copy and hundreds and hundreds filed in my computer, with even hundreds more on audio tape. I gave 700 homilies at Bellarmine University alone before I retired a few years back. I am so serious about doing my best in the pulpits that are entrusted to me, that when I am laid out in my casket, I want to be holding a copy of this book in my hands. When I shared that fact with the Archbishop of Winnipeg (Canada) and his priests a couple of years ago, I was shocked when they presented me with a huge copy of the Canadian Lectionary for my casket as I boarded the plane! 

In our first reading, Ezra the priest reads the Scriptures to the People of God who were returning to a Jerusalem in ruins, after having been in exile for years. After years of not being able to hear the Word of God, they began to weep and cry, bow down and prostrate themselves, when they heard the words of the Law read aloud by Ezra, the priest, from his raised platform.   


We Catholics are not known for our knowledge and love of the Word. I haven’t seen many Catholics cry when Scripture is read. There is a reason. Stung by the spawning of breakaway churches during the Protestant revolt of the 16th century, by people who were privately interpreting the Scriptures and coming up with all kinds of contradictory teachings, the Church in an attempt to protect the Word from false doctrines, overprotected it to the point of keeping it from the very people for whom it was intended. The Church basically read it for us and told us what it meant in the Catechism.  

We see our weakness when it comes to the Word, especially in the pre-Vatican II Church.  When I was a kid, Catholics could be late for Mass, missing the whole Liturgy of the Word, but it wasn’t counted as a serious sin till the chalice was uncovered and the Liturgy of the Eucharist started.  Scripture readings and the sermon were, for all practical purposes, looked at as only a warm up for the main performance. On the other hand, many Protestant Churches have traditionally celebrated the Lord’s Supper only a couple of times a year. One of the greatest things to come out of Vatican II, was the giving of the Word back to Catholic people: at Mass, in the Sacraments, in Bible study groups and in several new modern translations.  When it comes to the Word, we Catholics have come a long way in the last 50 years! Catholics are running out of excuses for not knowing the Bible.

The Word proclaimed and preached is a “lamp unto our feet.”  “It guides us on the right path.”  At Mass, we are invited to “feed on the Eucharist,” but we are also invited to “feed on the Word.” God asked Ezekiel the prophet, in a dramatic symbolic act, to take the scroll on which the Word was written and to eat it.  He said that it tasted like honey! It reminds us that we need to "ingest" what we hear and read! It need to "get it into" us! 

Does the Word proclaimed and preached here at the Cathedral taste like honey to you?  Does it burn in your heart?  Is it a lamp unto your feet, guiding the decisions of your life?  Like the Eucharist itself, is the Word “bread for the journey and strength for the trip” for you?  If you are to be nourished by this Word, the lectors must know how to proclaim the Word, the preacher must know how to preach the Word, but you must learn how to hear the Word!  If the Word is to be honey to your ears, you cannot lay all the responsibility at the feet of lectors and preachers, you must want to be nourished, you must take responsibility for your own nourishment and engage in practical steps to make it happen.  

You could rush out and buy a big coffee table Bible and start reading it from cover to cover, but you’d probably lose interest after the first few pages.  You could sign up for Scripture courses at Saint Meinrad, but few of you would have that luxury.  What I suggest, instead, is to make the most of the Liturgy of the Word while you are here!  Do you realize that over a three-year period, we read all of the most important parts of the Bible, right here in church?  Why not buy one of those paperback lector books for yourself?  Why not read the readings and the short commentaries online several times during the week, before they are proclaimed on Sunday and preached on?  Every three years, you will have read, studied, heard read and explained all of the most important parts of the entire Bible!  And you will have done it in manageable chunks during the time you used to daydream at Mass!  If you were to undertake this simple discipline in a serious way, I predict that you will get “hooked” on the Word. You will want to know more.  You may even decide to enroll in a Scripture class or Bible discussion group outside the Mass!

Scripture has been restored as an integral part of all the renewed sacraments. Scripture has been translated into a variety of modern English versions.  Scriptural commentaries and bible study aids for the average lay person have been produced by the hundreds.  Almost every parish these days has bible study classes.  Even seminaries are stressing preaching like never before!  I have taught preaching myself, part-time, at St. Meinrad! I have even been invited to Notre Dame June 15 to give a workshop on “claiming the pulpit for spiritual leadership and personal sanctification.” Good preaching not only leads his hearers to holiness, it leads the preacher himself to holiness if it is taken seriously! Opportunities abound for Bible study!  The table is spread! Appetites must be awakened!  There is no longer any valid excuse for Roman Catholics to be biblically illiterate!

When I look out over congregations around this diocese during the Eucharist I preside at, I often wonder what I can do to awaken them to the banquet in front of them!  I am reminded of those old prospectors in the cowboy movies I grew up on!  Those old prospectors were often pictured crawling along in the hot sun, gasping for water, while all around them huge cactuses stand there, full of water, waiting to be broken open!  If we don’t take advantage of all the opportunities we now have in the church to break open the Word, in order to drink in its life-giving waters, we are like those old prospectors!

My friends, I’m trying to make a point.  Living water flows from this pulpit and living bread is given out from that table.  If it is to nourish us, we must teach ourselves to “feed on” it!  It doesn’t happen without concentration and attention! We must become conscious and deliberate about listening to the Word!  We must learn to nourish ourselves, even on those days when the lector is not clearly heard, the preacher is not inspiring, and distractions are abundant! There are no excuses and no one to blame!  It is our responsibility to take advantage of what’s here: the living Word and the living Body and Blood of Christ. We will need this “bread for the journey and strength for the trip” if we are to walk in the footsteps of Jesus next week!