We cannot cover everything, but I would like to touch on where Knights of Emmanuel began, where it is now and where it is headed. In 1992, Our Lady began leading me on a set of pilgrimages that lead me around the world. In December of that year, one of those pilgrimages brought me to France, in particular, to Paris, and to a chapel of the Blessed Sacrament that, if you did not know where it was, you never would find it because it did not look much more than a townhouse from the outside. It was the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, and it is where the body of St. Peter Julian Eymard, his incorrupt body, is reposed.

The Incorrupt Body of St. Peter Julian Eymard

It was there during a visit, while kneeling in prayer before his body, that the words spoke clearly to my heart "Continue the battle, continue the battle." I had not a clue as to what those words meant. I knew a great deal about the history of his life and his passions. He had two passions, one was the Eucharist, that was first and foremost. Mass and Adoration were his life. His second passion was the priesthood. He gave his life for vocations, for the sanctity of priests, and to bring back fallen away priests to the holiness they are called, and to love for the Church, because all three are inseparable.

With that I carried those words with me for approximately a year and a half until 1994. A pilgrimage brought my wife, Liz, and me to Rome for the very first time. The request was for us to go and participate in the liturgical celebrations of Holy Week, a simple thing at home, something I thought we could just go and do. Little did I know,  about three or four days before we left for Rome, that in Rome for liturgical celebrations with the Holy Father, you needed tickets. I had never heard of this before in my whole life. I could not imagine having to have a ticket to get into church. Nonetheless, it is true, and that was the dilemma as well. I was asked by a priest if we had tickets. It was three or four days before we left for Rome. I had not a clue what these tickets were, much less who you would get them from or where you would find that person. Anyhow, we set off on that trip to Rome. We were to meet a friend of a friend as it were.

At the time we were publishing a publication called Thy Kingdom Come. The man who helped me with that is an associate, Mike Richard. At the time he was also helping a little Vietnamese sister put out a publication in New Orleans for the Vietnamese Community. She told him that she had a friend who worked in the Vatican. I went "Yea". Everyone has a friend in the Vatican. That's nice. She assured us that he would know how to get the tickets. So I was a little more at peace, but still you wonder about a friend of a friend. I asked Mike to ask her if she could ask her friend three things: if her friend could find out what the schedule was for Holy Week, if he could recommend a place for us to stay, and if he could help us find these tickets that I had heard about. Well, we went. He didn't recommend a hotel, he didn't send us a schedule, and he didn't tell us about the tickets, but she said he did make reservations for us. So we said O.K., that's good, because I didn't know anything about Rome to begin with. We were just hoping and praying for the best at that point.

A friend of a friend picked us up at the airport and drove us to the hotel where the reservations were. It turned out the hotel was on the main boulevard in front of the Vatican. It was the Hotel Columbus. We checked in and were waiting for this friend of a friend from the Vatican to  show up who is supposed to tell us where to go and what to do. Later that night, I guess around 8:00-8:30, this little Vietnamese priest walks in. His name is Monsignor Vincent, and if you will remember, that is who we dedicated this day to, better known in the Vatican as Monsignor Tran Ngnoc Tu. The guards, if you would say Monsignor Tu, would snap to attention and salute you, actually something I find quite extraordinary. As it turned out, this little friend is the Holy Father's personal secretary. So each night he would come, and he would bring us tickets to the liturgical celebration for the next day. We would gratefully and humbly go (memories are still very vivid and clear). We were privileged to sit in extraordinary places, very close to the Holy Father, something we never even dreamed of, and that continued throughout Holy Week. Monday or Tuesday after Palm Sunday, (of course, there were no liturgical celebrations after Palm Sunday up until the Chrism Mass Thursday morning), it was either Monday night or Tuesday night, he came and asked us if we could make Mass early in the morning. I asked him how early. So he asked us to be at the Bronze Door at 6:45. I told him we would be happy to do that, except that I had not a clue as to what the bronze door was or where it was. So he politely, calmly and patiently explained to us where this bronze door was. It was on the right side of St. Peter's Basilica. At 6:45 in the morning, you would find no one out there except at this one place. The Bronze Door turns out to be the entrance to the Apostolic Palace where those who had been invited or asked to attend the Holy Father's private Mass gather.

So we went there, and, of course, we were very well prepared having not brought any clothing for such. We found out afterwards that to attend these things you are actually supposed to wear black, a formal black to attend. We had not even a sports jacket or anything, so we went as we were, the "Louisiana Cajun" as it would be, to the Holy Father's Mass. There are pictures in the back that will reflect that. There is also a picture of Monsignor Vincent. You'll see his picture as the little Vietnamese priest.

Msgr. Vincent Tran Ngoc Thu with Darrell & Liz Bennett

It was on Holy Thursday, or the night before, I should say, that Monsignor Tu came and gave us two sets of tickets for the Chrism Mass. We did not know why we had two tickets, but we just accepted them and went with the flow as it were. One ticket was to attend the Chrism Mass. The second ticket was to receive Holy Communion from Our Holy Father at that Mass. Thus the words "Continue the battle" returned as John Paul holds up the Host, "This is the Body of Christ". The Chrism Mass with the Cardinals, Bishops and the priests who are there renew their pledge of fidelity to the Holy Father, to the Church and to God. It is also there that the work of Knights of Emmanuel begins and its passionate love for the priests, for our Holy Father, for all our Bishops and for all of our priests, faithful and fallen away, for they truly are "persona Christi".

They live and they act as the person of Christ in this world. Never utter a word against them. Simply pray for  them. We love them and sacrifice for them. As you experienced today, we pray and we pray for them. So it is, day in and day out, that this Mission has done that since that day. I think one of the things that Monsignor Vincent found odd about us is that truly we had gone there to pray for the Church and for the Holy Father. He asked every evening where we had gone and what we had done. Truly what we had done was to go and pray for the Church and for Our Holy Father. Thus an invitation was extended in a request made on behalf of the Holy Father to this little work of ours to pray for him each year. We prayed two novenas in particular, and even our group is not aware up until this point of that request. In October we do a novena from the 7^th - 16^th. A little note here is that my conversion was October 7, 1978. Nine days later John Paul II on the 16^th was elected Pope of our Church. So that is one of the novenas that this work has always embraced in October. The second spins around St. Peter Julian Eymard and Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament. From May 5^th - 13^th we celebrate a novena of prayer for the Church and the Holy Father to Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, for the Feast Day of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament is May 13^th.

Msgr. Vincent Tran Ngoc Thu & Pope John Paul II

It is also the day that Our Holy Father was shot, also the day that Our Lady spared him and saved him for us. So we celebrate those two days. In October for the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in May for the Eucharistic reign of Jesus Christ, both are synonymous. The triumph of Our Lady is the Eucharistic reign of Jesus Christ. We patiently and joyfully await that day as it approaches.Thus the importance of this First Thursday also to our group, the Knights of Emmanuel, as it became known. We continue that request of our Holy Father to pray for the Church, to pray for the Pope, pray for the priests and for vocations.

Most of all, we have to behold Christ in them, and the words "persona Christi" are not words or a title. They are the person. A priest stands behind the altar and at the words of Consecration utters "This is My Body, this is My Blood". It is the person of Christ, Jesus Christ present in him. In the sacrament of absolution when he says "I absolve you", you may hear the same priest who was there moments ago, but it is Jesus Christ who is forgiving you your sins. Thus we pray and we sacrifice for them, and even more so in the days, the months and the years to come.

This little work remained dormant from that Holy Thursday in '94 until a few months ago, and as God would have it, it took off. Our Lady's request for this work was basically very simple. She asked if we could find seven people in a parish, each who would be willing to take one day a week to pray for the Church, pray for the Holy Father, pray for the Bishop of that Diocese and for the Pastor of that parish. So we began. It spread tenfold the last four months than it did in the years previous. All this we see as a culmination up to now.

It has been a period of transition and now one in which it bears fruit. Our Lady has a great love for Cajun country. She wanted Knights of Emmanuel to spread through an area that we typically know as Cajun country, from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, and over to Lafayette, in these four dioceses. It is not that others are excluded. Certainly there are members of Knights of Emmanuel around the world at this point, thanks to the internet where they can access the information, however, in particular in this area and for a very special and particular reason. Our Lady intends to manifest Her maternal presence in an extraordinary way in the near future even as it begins to unfold now. Part of that is Our Lady embracing Her dear priests in caring for them as sure as She cared for the Infant Babe that holy night in Bethlehem.

In the world today, the persecution of the Church grows and spreads, and indeed there will be priests who will have to flee many countries. Many will find their way to our shores, and many of them here.

Our Lady has said that for those priests who find their way here, each will find a home, and those homes are yours. Indeed, you will sacrifice for them, you will love them and care for them, and truthfully, some of you will even give your lives for them, not begrudgingly, but as sure as you would lay it down for any of your children if need be. We hold the priests dear to our hearts.  

Our Lady promised three things to those parishes where there would be at least seven people, and to remove a myth, no, it does not have to stop at seven people. We wish it would be seven times seven people as it were. We hope that in each parish there would be so many people that you could and would have perpetual adoration in every parish. So please, do not stop at seven.

Remarkably, I think Our Lady did one better than Abraham in negotiating with Our Lord. Instead of stopping at ten, She stopped at seven. Only a woman could do such a thing. She says for those parishes in which seven of the faithful are willing to make that sacrifice and to take an hour to pray the prayers She has requested, one each day of the week, that parish would be preserved, that the apostasy there would end, and that the faithful of that parish, even as the early church during times of trial or persecution, would be nurtured by the bread of Heaven. Our Lady takes care of Her children.

At the heart of the prayers for the Knights of Emmanuel is not the long series that we celebrate on First Thursdays, but at the very heart truly is the Act of Consecration, which is most central to all that you can do. Second is the Chaplet of Divine Mercy as we always approach God and beg for His mercy for us and the world, and third is five decades of the Rosary. Finally, the last is the Chaplet of St. Michael. Each is a great need for the people of God in this hour. Truly Our Lady continually asks us to pray and to do penance, to implore God's mercy for the salvation of souls and for our own salvation and sanctification, because first and foremost that is what we pray for the priests, even for the Holy Father, for our Bishops and for all priests. We pray first for their salvation, then for their sanctification that they may truly be holy priests, holy in the lives of Padre Pio and so many others that we are familiar with.

John Paul II said that holiness is the measure of an ordinary life of faith. We are not called to  accept a sinful life, but we are called to be saints. We are called to live holy lives. We are called to exercise heroic virtue in our lives. We are not called to settle for second best. We are not called to settle for failure. That does not mean we do not stumble and fall. I do not have enough hands and toes and fingers to count the number of times I fall each day, but we get up with Our Lady's help. We continue, but we pray for our priests that they may be that shining example. As Don Bosco said, "No priest goes to Heaven or hell alone." Because of the influence that priest has, he takes a great number of the faithful with him to Heaven or he drags a great number of the faithful with him to hell. Let us pray that they all take a great number with them to Heaven, and also as shining examples, increase our holiness and faith as well.

We live in extraordinary times. There are a lot of people who propose doom and gloom to us, and Lord knows, there will be difficult moments in the future, but that is not what you focus upon. As there surely will be a cross to bear, Our Lord will manifest His Presence in the Eucharist in such an extraordinary manner that only the most hardened of hearts could or would deny it. At the moment we live in a time, in a period, where the last events before the illumination occur. It is very similar to the time in which Christ lived, and the illumination can be compared to the raising of Lazarus. It was an extraordinary event when He did that, and so will Our Lord when He manifests  His mercy and His love in such a great event.

At that point in time the heart and the mind of every soul will either decide for God or choose the world. There is no middle ground. The importance of everyone's prayers in this time before that, I do not have the words to convey it. We must pray and sacrifice for the grace of conversion for all souls, in particular at that moment that all may decide to choose God. It is  unthinkable to consider the other choice, and yet without grace, it is possible. Our Lady has been pleading and begging, most specifically at Fatima on July 13^th in the apparition there, when She said "Souls go to hell because there is no one to pray and sacrifice for them." It is an unbelievable burden almost to those who hear and understand that plea of a Mother for the souls of Her children. Yet, that is a plea that echoes all the more in the times in which we live. Our Lady still pleads for that, for souls who are willing to pray and to do penance and to sacrifice for the conversion of sinners. There are so many people who like to hear what She says and so few who simply accept and do what She has asked. We have to pray that those numbers increase, and that we ourselves encourage each other to be more fervent and faithful in our own responses, because it is souls that are at stake - something I wake up to every morning and go to sleep with every night. It is a constant echo like a ringing of the ears you cannot get rid of. It is not begrudgingly, because I would want it to be there. It motivates you to action at times, when you certainly do not feel like doing it. If there is someone here who feels like praying from the time they get up until they go to bed and accepting all the sacrifices that come your way, my hat and my heart go off to you, because you are an extraordinary person. It is not an easy thing to accept everything that comes to you each and every day. Most everyone I know has some extraordinary hardships, and yet, most people accept them with a smile. I cannot say they smile all of the time and every day. But they do when they think about why they accept it, bear it, carry it and remember Our Lord led the way for us, and Our Lady is always with us as surely as She stood beneath the foot of the cross and walked with Her Son every step of the way to Golgotha and to Calvary. So She remains with every child of Hers until She sees them safely in Heaven. How much more, how can you say a Mother loves one child more than another. It is not that She loves more but only differently and distinctly. She loves Her priests, who in particular, represent Her Son in time for all eternity.

I hope you will join us and continue to join us as we pray and sacrifice for our priests, and I hope you will also encourage your pastors and your priests and the religious wherever you may be. You know a kind word goes a long way. With anyone who has ever heard a kind word, a little note of thanks and appreciation. All those make such a difference when our priests are in Gethsemane at this hour. It is a lonely, hard time, and Satan uses the oldest and simplest battle plan there ever was, and it is to divide and conquer. Our priests are so strung out, so isolated, so overburdened that for any of them to survive, truly is a miracle and a grace of God. For those that do not, there must be a share of blame for us who do not pray and sacrifice for them to a degree. So let us do what we can to renew our efforts to pray and to sacrifice for them and for all souls when they die. For those who have the courage, we will be back here next First Thursday. We will continue the story of the Mission and the Knights of Emmanuel as well. I would ask you on this day in particular, if you would, to remember Monsignor Vincent. The last time we were supposed to have met with him was on July 15^th, 2002. He did not show up that evening. It was the day he was called home.

Thank you. God bless you all. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.    

Darrell Bennett