Final Remarks
Knights of Columbus 143rd Convention
Washington, D.C.
August 7, 2025
Words of Gratitude, Encouragement, and Challenge
As our time together comes to a close, I am delighted to offer a few parting reflections, words of gratitude, words of encouragement, words of challenge. First, I want to thank our worthy Supreme Knight for your kindness in bringing to the attention of this Convention my 30th anniversary as a bishop and my 20th as Supreme Chaplain. To serve as priest and bishop is my very life, and serving as your Chaplain is a great privilege and a great grace in my life and ministry – and for that I thank you from the bottom of my heart!
Let me also say that it is has been good and it is always good to be together. What the Supreme Convention always does is to bring home to all of us who we are & what we do in the name of charity, fraternity, unity, & patriotism. When I stop and talk with you and you tell me about what is going on in your jurisdictions – about your plans, your projects, your progress – then who we are and what we do as the Knights of Columbus is brought home to me again and again. It’s dedicated Knights, more than 2.1 million strong, doing the mission entrusted to our Order by Blessed Michael McGivney.
The Worthy Supreme Knight’s excellent address offered a comprehensive view of what the Order is doing. And while his address contains a lot of impressive statistics and very clear descriptions of the programs offered by the Knights, it really told the story of individual knights and their families who are living the principles of charity, unity, fraternity, and patriotism, and it told the story of those who have been impacted by your faith, your charity, your solidarity with those in need. For this & much more, I join myself with our Supreme Knight in thanking you.
The Why of It
Just this week, a hotel guest (not a knight) stopped and asked me, “Who are the Knights of Columbus and what do they do?” I wanted to say, “Do you have an hour or two?” Instead I gave an impromptu K of C “elevator speech” which ran like this: “The Knights are 2.1 million Catholic men founded many years ago by a holy priest, Blessed Michael McGivney. They take their faith seriously and support one another in living the faith and in striving to be good husbands and fathers. They band together to put their faith into action by spreading the faith and by helping those in need. The Knights are in nine countries and our membership is growing…wanna join?”
As we prepare to return to our jurisdictions, our councils, our assemblies, and our homes, let us practice our own “elevator speech” that describes in 25 words or less who we are and what we do. But make sure your elevator speech contains what mine did not. And that’s the “why” of it. Why are we knights? Why do we do what we do?
This Convention has been a resounding answer to that question – because these days we’ve spent together have been built on hope, on the theological virtue of hope and on our calling to be ‘heralds of hope.’ Hope is why we join the Knights and live as Knights. But let’s be sure that we clearly understand what hope truly is. Because a lot of people think of hope as wishful thinking. Or some think of it as mere optimism . . . but the Knights of Columbus is not the Optimist Club, good as it may be and as much good as it may accomplish.
Optimism can be a well-founded expectation that people’s lives and situations can improve if the right kind of assistance is applied, in the right measure, at the right time. But hope is on a different footing. Hope is a gift from God, implanted in us like a seed in Baptism. As we grow to spiritual maturity, this seed germinates and produces fruit. The fruit that it produces is first of all a longing for redemption, a desire for God, a desire to be with God, now and for all eternity. Hope also produces in us a deep trust in God, in all that God has promised, and in all that God has done to bring about our salvation: above all sending his Son to become one of us, his Son who died to save us from sin and rose to open for us the way to heaven.
Hope means “liv[ing] in this passing world with our hearts set on the world that is to come.”
At Mass we hear the words, “Lift up your hearts!” That’s what hope does, it lifts up our hearts – lifts them up beyond immorality, greed, pettiness, jealousy, and rivalry, because in hope we seek to attain something infinitely greater and better than the misery such commonplace vices produce in us and in our world. Lifting up our hearts to the Lord, even if we’re not yet at goal, fills our minds and hearts with light – so that we can see ourselves as God sees us, we can know what we must stop doing and start doing so as to begin living here on earth the heavenly life we aspire to. Lifting up our hearts means hoping in God’s love and the way we express that in real life is by caring for the needy & the outcast, includes laying aside any indifference that may hobble us just as Blessed Michael McGivney has taught us to do. Pope Benedict XVI famously said that ‘those who have hope live differently.” Why do we Knights live as we do? Because we are men of hope.
Heralds of Hope
But hope is not a private matter. It is something that unites us in fraternity and charity, and it is something that every patriotic knight must share broadly. Thus, our theme, ‘heralds of hope’. We will soon return home, soon come down from the mountain, so let us commit ourselves to nurturing within ourselves the gift of hope, especially by participating in and promoting the COR initiative. And more deeply anchored we are in hope, the better we can be ‘heralds of hope’, Catholic men united in hope, who bear witness by what we say and do to the hope that is ours in Christ Jesus. If, as Pope St. John Paul II said, there is “a charity that evangelizes”, so too there is ‘a hope that evangelizes,’ – a way of life, a way of conducting ourselves, a way of speaking all oriented toward God and to our destiny to share his friendship forever.
As we have heard in these days, many young people, especially men, experience isolation and loneliness. Lacking a relationship with God, lacking good friends, and a mission in life, they are sad and hopelessness, even despair, grips their hearts. They are victims of secular culture that strives with all its might to snuff out hope. Nonetheless the human heart is made for hope because the desire for God is implanted deeply in each one of us. That may be why many young men today are turning to the faith. They are searching for something better than the culture offers. When it is evident to others that our lives are anchored in hope, that we have the courage to face life’s difficulties with undiminished hope, that we bring hope and joy into some of life’s most hopeless situations, they may we ask, “Where do they get all this?” Brothers, we have been schooled in hope by Blessed Michael McGivney who brought hope to those who were bereft of hope and the Holy Spirit has filled our hearts with “a hope that does not disappoint.” Let us go forth from this Convention as men of hope and heralds of hope!
Vivat Jesus!