Knights of Columbus Council 3300

Home
United States
East Haven, CT
Knights of Columbus Council 3300

Website

We are a Non- Profit, Religious based organization established to provide Volunteer Services, Support

10/29/2026

Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
Luke 13:31-35
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus compares himself to a mother hen who longs to gather her chicks under her wing. As the theologian N. T. Wright points out, this is much more than a sentimental image. It refers to the gesture of a hen when fire is sweeping through the barn. In order to protect her chicks, she will sacrifice herself, gathering them under her wing and using her own body as a shield.

On the cross, Jesus used, as it were, his own sacrificed body as a shield, taking the full force of the world’s hatred and violence. He entered into close quarters with sin (because that’s where we sinners are found) and allowed the heat and fury of sin to destroy him, even as he protected us.

With this metaphor in mind, we can see, with special clarity, why the first Christians associated the crucified Jesus with the suffering servant of Isaiah. By enduring the pain of the cross, Jesus did indeed bear our sins; by his stripes we were indeed healed.

10/28/2026

Feast of Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles
Luke 6:12-16
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus chooses the Twelve, whom he names apostles.

In the apse of the church of San Clemente in Rome, there is a gorgeous twelfth-century mosaic that gives visual expression to the call of the Twelve. At the center of the composition is the crucified Jesus. Surrounding the cross are twelve doves, symbolizing the apostles, who would fly around the world with the message of salvation.

No biblical figure is ever given an experience of God without receiving, at the same time, a commission. Moses spies the burning bush, hears the sacred name of Yahweh, and is then told to go back to Egypt to liberate his people; Isaiah enjoys an encounter with God amidst the splendor of the temple liturgy and is then sent to preach; Saul is overwhelmed by the luminosity of the risen Jesus and is subsequently called to apostleship.

The apostles are not simply a distant memory; rather, they live on through what we call the apostolic succession. Therefore, the apostolicity of the Church is our guarantee that we are, despite many developments and changes across the centuries, still preserving the faith that was first kindled in that company of Jesus’s friends.

10/27/2026

Luke 13:18-21
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus says that the kingdom of God “is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch of dough was leavened.”

What’s the kingdom of heaven? It is God’s way of ordering things. How often the Bible contrasts it to the “world,” which is the way of ordering things that is born of sin. When self-interest, rivalry, egotism, violence, and fear are fundamental, things will get ordered in a certain way—economically, politically, socially.

But the kingdom of God is the way of ordering things born of love—love for God and love for neighbor. Generosity, peace, nonviolence, and trust will give rise to a new way of ordering things. This is true of a family, a school, a parish, a community, a nation state.

Now how in the world does one get this project off the ground? As should be clear, this never happens all at once overnight. Rather, in small ways, people begin living according to the kingdom. And then, in God’s time, this new community begins to have a leavening effect on the wider society.

10/27/2026

Father who art in Heaven, hallowed is Your name and word, which I wish to study, know, and live. Bring me closer to Your Kingdom and grace, by following in the footsteps of Christ. Instruct and guide me God, through the Holy Spirit, so that Your word may be made flesh, and Your Testament be made sacred. Give us today our daily bread, to nurture my spirit at Your altar. Amen.

10/26/2026

Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
Luke 13:10-17
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus heals a woman who had been crippled for eighteen years. Can we see the power that flows from faith in rather obvious and spectacular ways?

Going back to Jesus himself, of course, and up through so many of the saints in the tradition, you will see the power of faith manifested in healing. It’s as though a Christian becomes a conduit of the divine power, as though God’s power, which creates and sustains the cosmos, can flow through the person of faith for healing.

We can also experience spiritual healing of the soul. Its source is the energy, the power, the Spirit, the new being, that appeared in and through Jesus Christ. We heal the soul by bringing to bear the salvator, the healer, the one who in his person reconciled God and us, who opened the soul to the divine power. Where is this new being available? In Scripture, the liturgy, and the sacraments.

10/25/2026

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Matt 22:34-40
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus names love of God and neighbor when a scholar challenges him to identify the greatest commandment.

Since love (caritas) is what God is, it is also that virtue that conforms us most dramatically to God. Thomas Aquinas says, in eloquently simple language, that caritas is friendship with God. In his great farewell discourse, offered the night before his death, Jesus says to his disciples that he no longer calls them servants but friends—and in this he opens up a new world.

In any other religion, a human being could be called, vis-à-vis God, a creature, a penitent, or an eager supplicant, but only in Christianity could she be called an intimate of God. This is true because in Christ, God has become one of us, thereby establishing a parity beyond our capacity even to imagine.

The participation in what God is is what Aquinas means by caritas, friendship with God. The moral challenge, of course, is to live out the implications of that friendship, listening and speaking to God, obeying the promptings of his voice, opening one’s heart to him, and, above all, loving what he loves—which is to say, everyone and everything.

10/24/2026

Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
Luke 13:1-9
Friends, today’s Gospel includes the parable of a fig tree that bears no fruit.

This is a standard trope in the theological literature of Israel: The tree that bears no fruit is evocative of the moral person who bears no spiritual fruit. Every single person has a mission: to be a conduit of the divine grace into the world. Planted in God—think of Jesus’s image of the vine and the branches—they are meant to bring forth the fruits of love, peace, compassion, justice, and nonviolence.

And notice that this should be effortless. The closer God gets, the more alive we become. But the mystery of sin is that we resist the invasion of God; we prefer to go our own way; we cling to our own prerogatives and our own narrow freedom. And the result is lifelessness. It feels like depression, like your life is going nowhere—in Dante’s language, like being “lost in a dark wood.”

In Jesus’s parable, the one caring for the tree begs the owner for one more chance to manure the tree and hoe around it, hoping to bring it back to life. But if no life comes, the tree will be cut down. This is the note of urgency that is struck over and again in the Bible. We can run out of time. We can become so resistant to God’s grace that our leaves dry up. This is not divine vengeance; it is spiritual physics.

So don’t be afraid of God! Surrender to him.

10/23/2026

Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
Luke 12:54-59
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus criticizes the crowd by saying that they could interpret the earth and the clouds but do not know how to interpret the present time.

So, how do we know what’s going on in the world? How do we read the signs of the times? We could do so politically, sociologically, culturally, or economically. All these ways are valuable lenses for viewing the world. But note the important difference in the Bible.

What was peculiar about ancient Israel was their reading the world through theological lenses. When they wanted to read the signs of the times, they wondered what God was doing and why. The deepest and truest reading is the theological one that seeks after the divine causality and purpose that works under and through all the other lenses.

The modern period has become largely conditioned by a deist view of God, whereby God is construed as a distant object only vaguely related to the world. On this reading, God does not actively involve himself in the affairs of economics, politics, or culture. Ah! But that’s not the biblical reading. For the biblical authors, God acts in and through all the ordinary events and dynamics of the world.

10/22/2026

Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
Luke 12:49-53
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus declares his desire to spread eternal life among human beings. He says, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!”

What is that fire? His forerunner, John, gave us a clue: “I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. . . . He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Jesus came in order to torch the world with the heat and light of the divine Spirit, which is none other than the love shared by the Father and the Son, the very inner life of God.

Jesus is a prophet because he teaches; he is a king because he leads and shepherds; but he is a priest because he is the spreader of the sacred fire. Every one of the baptized shares in the priesthood of Christ and is therefore obligated to be a conduit of holiness, a bearer of the divine life, a spreader of the fire that sets the world ablaze.

10/21/2026

Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
Luke 12:39-48
Friends, in today’s Gospel, the Lord urges his disciples and us to be prudent servants, following his ways in anticipation of his coming again. Theologians often call prudence the queen of the virtues because it is the capacity to reign sovereignly over one’s life, both ordering one’s inner powers and directing one’s affairs wisely in the outside world.

Prudence is that sure touch, that moral instinct that renders one capable of making the right decision under pressure and in the face of complex circumstances. Prudence is a sort of accumulated theoretical and practical wisdom, a know-how that is for the most part instinctual, in the bones.

When placed in the Christian context, therefore, prudence is a feel for how Jesus would react, how he would think, how he would move in a particular situation. It is tantamount to having one’s soul gathered around Christ as its center, so that all one’s actions are informed by Jesus and his way of being in the world. Christian prudence comes from apprenticing to Christ—that is to say, moving in with him, watching at close quarters how he lives and moves and gestures.

Address

355 Foxon Road
East Haven, CT
06513

Website

http://www.kofc3300.org/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Knights of Columbus Council 3300 posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.