Bishop McKnight -- “Let us pray for one another”

“Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now.”

— President Harry S. Truman, April 13, 1945

“I ask you to pray for me. Don’t forget!”

— Pope Francis, Sept. 27, 2015

Like a man from Missouri and another from Buenos Aires, Bishop-elect W. Shawn McKnight believes in the power of prayer and is counting on people to make the best use of it.

“I’m just a person like everyone else,” he said, pausing briefly before adding: “... who has been given an otherwise impossible talk, apart from God’s grace.”

He described being tapped to lead a diocese — not to mention a place over 300 miles from where he grew up — as “overwhelming” and “breathtaking.”

“It is a thrill to know that whenever God has called me to do something that I have not planned on doing — and that has happened many times in my Priesthood, and this is no different — He has always helped me,” Bishop-elect McKnight said Nov. 21 during his first visit to the Jefferson City diocese.

“God is full of surprises!” he said. “Many of those assignments that I’ve had, I probably never would have chosen for myself. But that’s not the way it works in the Church. We get tapped. And we get trained and we are formed to simply say ‘yes.’”

He asked for prayers both of the “Please” and the “Thank You” variety.

“Let us pray for one another in this time of transition,” he said. “Please know that you are all now in my daily prayers. I entrust us to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to be our safeguard in the faith, now and forever. Amen.”