Knights of Columbus Elder Council 1195

Dear most reverend Archbishop Schnurr:

We would like to thank Fr. Joseph Koterski, SJ who was kind enough to help guide our language in the following call to repentance. We respectfully request your consideration to allow us to proceed with the following campaign.

A Call to Repent

“I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13: 34-35.

As Christ’s disciples, He commands us to love others in the same way He loves us. We are so very fortunate to serve a Lord who gives us an abundance of what we need to obey His commandments. We can look to the Image of the Divine Mercy as an expression of our Lord’s endless mercy and infinite love, which Christ graciously wants us all to receive. God is calling for us to repent, seek His forgiveness, and trust in His mercy. Led by our Blessed Mother, God calls us to become instruments of Christ by transforming sin into something good.

We, your faithful, turn to our Lord Jesus, whose love for us is infinite and His treasury of compassion inexhaustible: we have not loved our Lord as we easily might have, nor served Him enough in our neighbor as we could have. We are truly sorry for this unfaithful love and promise to do better in the future. Because Christ Jesus accepts everything that we do in God's grace, when done in a spirit of love and obedience, as reparation, we offer our every thought, word, deed, and suffering in union with our Lord’s own sufferings. We ask Christ to join our reparation to that which He ceaselessly offers to the Father in the Mass and in the silence of the tabernacle. We ask Christ Jesus to help us to suffer lovingly and to aid others who also suffer. May our Lord’s redemptive love be fruitful in the hearts of all those in His Church, so that we all may become obedient servants to eternally glorify our Father in Heaven. (This paragraph was adapted from a contemporary prayer of reparation).

We seek to offer ourselves to make reparation for the evils we have allowed into our Church and into our communities. We have permitted the culture of death to infect and corrupt our youth, the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of life, and our trusted leaders, including some of our own priests, bishops, and clergy. There is no need to justify past sins. Instead, we seek to make reparation for past sins by giving ourselves to Christ. We wish to dedicate this next liturgical year as a year of repentance. Our hope is to collectively humble ourselves before God and ask His only begotten Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, for His divine mercy. We call on the Holy Spirit to come and purify our Lord’s most sacred gift to us – the Holy Catholic Church. May we be the light for all the world to see.

We, your faithful, agree to do the following as an act of reparation for our sins and to transform ourselves in Christ’s love:

• Pray daily in the morning, afternoon, and evening
• Attend daily mass when possible
• Display both the Image of the Divine Mercy and the Sacred Heart of Jesus prominently in our homes and churches
• Commit ourselves to perform acts of charity
• Fast on Fridays
• Visit our Lord at least one time each week at adoration
• Fill our churches by praying the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the 1st Friday of every month
• Pray a daily Rosary
• Ask for the Lord’s mercy for the sake of our country at 3:00 each day (pray the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy if possible)
• Generously tithe with joyful hearts

We respectfully ask your permission to present this campaign to faithful Catholics in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, the call for repentance intends to be a grass roots movement from the bottom up to show you and our beloved priests our unwavering support during these uncertain times. We are confident that our Lord will bestow His many graces on us transforming all of Cincinnati through His love and mercy.

Faithfully yours in Christ,

Archbishop Elder Council

Knights of Columbus