You’ve probably noticed by now that earlier this year, I borrowed a phrase used often by Pope John Paul II and used it as the title of a book. A Civilization of Love is really about you and your families, because it describes the way in which Knights have long chosen to live their lives, with charity, unity and fraternity.

On the very first page, I quote Pope Benedict, who has taken up the phrase with enthusiasm. In his message to World Youth Day last year, he said,

“May the Holy Spirit make you creative in charity, persevering in your commitments, and brave in your initiatives, so that you will be able to offer your contribution to the building up of the ‘civilization of love.’ The horizon of love,” the Pope said, “is truly boundless: it is the whole world!”

It may seem too ambitious to talk about transforming the world, much less doing so by trying to create a civilization that is very different from the one in which we now live. But the earliest Christians did precisely that: they did so by their example, by holding out the possibility of a life that was higher, more beautiful, and above all more authentic than the vulgarity, violence and greed of the ancient pagan world. Today we have the same opportunity.

Gentlemen, we have the power – given us by the Holy Spirit – to transform the world in the same way. Let us join with our great popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI in “Building a Civilization of Love through Charity, Unity and Fraternity.”