(This message is reprinted from the January 2011 Arkansas State Knights of Columbus Newsletter.)

Dear Brother Knights,

I am honored to greet you as the State Chaplain and look forward to working with you in the coming months.

I would like to share with you an image for our work together this year that comes from an experience I had while taking a side trip from a meeting of abbots in Corpus Christi to tour the USS Lexington, a retired aircraft carrier now docked as a museum in Corpus Christi harbor. We were duly impressed by the large thick ropes tethering the huge ship to the pier. But we asked the Navy guide: "Why do you not use chains instead of ropes for such a huge ship?"

He replied that the rope was actually much stronger and safer than cable for this job. These ropes are made from thousands of individual strands wound together. Individually these strands of thread have practically no strength, but bound together this way they have enormous strength and are also supple. No matter how large a chain we would use, its strength would depend on the weakest link.

In the Knights of Columbus, we are a rope, not a chain – a rope woven by God. We give one another strength by being bound together, and our overall strength doesn't depend on any one of us. These days hostile attacks against God, the Church, and Catholic values grow ever more powerful. If we were just links in a chain, we would have only our individual strength to depend on, but as strands in God's rope, we can call on the strength of all.

In recruiting new members in the coming year, I suggest this image of the rope to guide your efforts. When new members join the Knights of Columbus, we offer them a share in this strong rope of faith and they in turn bring strength to the rope with their own faith and love. Together we can extend this strong and supple rope to help those in need: the suffering in homes, the outcast, the poor, the immigrant, and the unborn.