Knights Participate in Prayer for Peace Initiative

Supreme Knight Carl Anderson offers a prayer intention at an ecumenical prayer service at Holy Trinity Church in Washington, D.C., during the International Prayer for Peace conference held at Georgetown University.

Several years ago, I led a delegation of Knights of Columbus to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Monterrey, Mexico, on her feast day. During the celebration of the Mass I was given an unusual place of honor – a chair behind the main altar so that I was facing the congregation and watching the back of the cardinal archbishop as he celebrated the Mass.

As the celebrant began the Eucharist prayer a poor Mexican mother carrying a tiny infant in her arms began to walk down the center aisle on her knees. She proceeded up the stairs to the altar and placing her child on the ground just in front of the altar she folded her hands and began to pray as the cardinal elevated the host at the consecration.

Since that time I have often thought of this woman with her child and me on opposite sides of the altar as a kind of metaphor for the situation of Catholics in the Western Hemisphere. And I have never once doubted which of us had the truly privileged place in the heavenly banquet that was celebrated that day.

Many religions have regarded wealth and physical possessions as distractions from the spiritual life and spiritual values. Jesus also makes this point when he reminds us that where a man’s treasure is, so will be his heart. Therefore he tells his disciples to store up treasure in heaven.

But Jesus has done something more. He has identified himself personally with the poor, with their condition and with their suffering. And he does this for a reason other than to free his disciples from worldly distractions. His disciples ask him, “When did we see you hungry or thirsty or naked and not give you something to eat or to drink or to wear? He tells them that when they did not do these things to the poor and suffering around them, they did not do it to him. Jesus has united himself with each person in a unique way, especially those who suffer.

From the first instant of his birth, Jesus shows us that there is a divine solidarity with the poor. There is no room for him in the inn. His first home is a manger more fit for animals rather than for humans. And this solidarity continues when his family flees from persecution and lives in exile in Egypt. As Pope Paul VI put it so clearly, “on the face of every human being, especially when marked by tears and sufferings, we can and must see the face of Christ.”

We were reminded of this so many times by Blessed Teresa of Calcutta when she told us to “Take time to love Jesus in the poor.” Mother Teresa was working with the poor in Calcutta who had little experience of Christianity. Her ministry—like the message of the Good Samaritan – makes clear our charity cannot be limited by race, faith or nationality.

All this presents a special challenge to those of us living in affluence in the United States and Europe. Today, the global community of Christians is overwhelmingly poor. Philip Jenkins writes in The Next Christendom, “Considering Christianity as a global reality can make us see the whole religion in a radically new perspective, which is startling and, often, uncomfortable … Christianity is deeply associated with poverty. Contrary to myth, the typical Christian is not a White fat cat in the United States or western Europe, but rather a poor person, often unimaginably poor by Western standards.” This gulf between the Church of the Affluent and the Church of the Poor calls for a new global solidarity.

Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson, left, took part in a panel discussion entitled "To Make Poverty History: A Challenge for the World" at the International Prayer fo Peace. Beside him is Mark Pelavin of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, USA.

Ted van der Zalm and his wife Miriam are the parents of five young children. Several years ago they read a United Nations report that stated “a person dies every eight seconds due to water-related diseases.” They decided that they would do something about the problem. In the fall of 2004 they mortgaged their home in Ontario, Canada, in order to purchase well-digging equipment and they founded “Wells of Hope.” With their new equipment, they and their children drove from Canada to Guatemala.

Local Knights of Columbus councils helped provide the van der Zalms with meals, lodging and gas money along the way. Their work to provide safe drinking water in rural Guatemala has saved hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives already. Ted and Miriam represent a new form of Christian solidarity for the 21st century – one that finds personal ways to transcend national barriers in helping the poor.

In his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “My deep personal sharing in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a sharing of my very self with them – I must give to others not only something that is my own, but my very self; I must be personally present in my gift” (34).

One extraordinary response to this need was the Synod of Bishops for America held in 1997. There, Pope John Paul II chose to speak not of the “Americas,” but only of “America” in order to emphasize “all that is common to the peoples of the continent ... (and) to strengthen the bonds of solidarity and communion.”

The Synod for America is one of the most important events for the future of the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council. Unfortunately, in too many places its work has been largely forgotten. Nonetheless, its promise remains great.

What can be achieved will depend on the extent Catholics in the United States take up the challenge of the Synod and Deus Caritas Est to transcend national boundaries in the work of charity and justice throughout the Western Hemisphere and around the globe.