This month, the Knights of Columbus will provide food to some 13,500 families in Erbil who have been displaced by the ISIS takeover of Mosul and Nineveh in Iraq.
A national television commercial featuring Fr. Douglas Bazi, a Catholic priest who was kidnapped and tortured and now runs a refugee camp, will also air in the United States, hopefully prompting viewers to send even more aid.
“Christians in the Middle East face persecution and extinction simply for their belief in the one who taught us to love one another,” Supreme Knight Carl Anderson said in a press release.
“Despite the genocidal persecution against them, they have continued to be an inspiration to the power of their faith, and to the love of God and neighbor. They need our solidarity and support, and we are pleased to help provide it.”
The organization has already donated millions in aid to the displaced Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East, but this shipment of food supplies will bring their assistance to over $4 million. Each package contains food basics such as cooking oil, wheat, beans and canned fish and meat. Including transportation and packaging, each kit costs $60.
The spiritual climax of the Gospel of John, as Father John Waiss points out, occurs at the foot of the Cross, where Jesus utters his parting words: “Woman, behold, your son!” and “Behold your mother!” (John 19:26-27). While these words were addressed to the Apostle John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the Church has long understood this moment as a universal adoption. To truly image Christ, we must share in His parentage; if we embrace God as our spiritual Father but reject Mary as our mother, we treat Christ as a half-brother rather than our "firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29). As Origen noted as early as the third century, the profound depths of the Gospel are only accessible to those who, like John, rest their heads on Jesus’ breast and receive Mary into their own homes. This maternal role is deeply rooted in biblical typology, positioning Mary as the fulfillment of the great mothers of the Old Covenant. She is the New Eve , the mother of all the living according ...