At the peripheries: Knights answer needs
Published 6:04 pm Wednesday, December 13, 2017
The “Prayer to St. Joseph” encourages the Patron of Workers to “Inspire workers of all kinds/to walk ever in your footsteps as faithful servants/coupling charity with justice/and becoming true followers of Jesus.”
You can find it in the St. Joseph People’s Prayer Book.
But you could find those words come to life for St. Joseph Catholic Church in Port Arthur last Sunday, when the Knights of Columbus of the Diocese of Beaumont presented St. Joseph pastor the Rev. Kevin Badeaux with a check for $100,000 to help repair his church.
The donation was made not at the multicultural parish at 4600 Procter St. but at 9 a.m. Mass some 20 city blocks away at St. James Catholic Church, 3617 Gulfway Drive. That’s where Badeaux’s parishioners gather these days as they weather the long wait to repair their own church building.
Those words will spring to life again Sunday when the Rev. Jim McClintock accepts another $100,000 from the Knights to fix St. Mary Catholic Church in Fannett. Like Badeaux and his displaced flock, McClintock’s parishioners worship at another church, in their case St. Martin de Porres Mission at 7467 Boyt Road, Beaumont.
“Please, be patient,” McClintock advised his parishioners on his church website. “Christ be with you all in this difficult time.” In this case, it’s Christ acting through some of his people, the Knights.
Tropical Storm Harvey did its meanest work on Greater Port Arthur’s streets, raining on the just and unjust without distinction. Churches responded as churches usually do: They opened their doors to shelter the forlorn, opened their pantries to feed the hungry, opened their hearts to comfort the disconsolate. It happened across the region and across faith lines – with Baptists and Methodists, independents and many more – and it probably always will.
And then they aided one another.
The Knights of Columbus represent the best of that helping and charitable tradition. Formed 135 years ago and composed of 2 million Catholic men, the Knights raised some $2.5 million to answer human needs from Hurricane and Tropical Storm Harvey.
Phil Chauvin, the Beaumont diocese’s emergency response coordinator and a Knight, said the donations were made through the organization’s Texas State Council. St. Joseph’s and St. Mary’s were deemed to be most in need of aid, he said, and the Knights came through for them.
In meeting part of these churches’ needs, the Knights met the proud traditions of the Patron of Workers. They inspired workers of all kinds, they acted as faithful servants, they coupled charity with justice.
Supreme Knight Carl Anderson said the Knights as an organization “are answering Pope Francis’ call to go to the peripheries.”
Even to the edge of the Texas coast.