Ronald Knox

The laity-in the words of Lumen gentium-live in "the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of existence is woven." Where in that web is there room for anything resembling a retreat? Is a retreat for lay people practical, let alone possible? In these two dozen conferences, Monsignor Ronald Knox answers these questions resoundingly in the affirmative, addressing the foundations of the Christian life, the sacraments, and the virtues; the life and death of our Blessed Lord; and the practical needs and problems of the everyday, and their amelioration in the believer's relationship with God. For the laity are not intended for some mean state of mediocrity, of "just about good enough," in the spiritual life. On the contrary, they are meant to strive for perfection-to be perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect, gladly taking up their crosses and running down the way of love after their Lord Jesus Christ. On par with Knox's retreats for priests and his "In Slow Motion" volumes, the Holy Spirit-enlivened preaching of A Retreat for Lay People is certain to illuminate the heart's darkness and stir the soul's dullness with the fiery breath of hope.

A proper examination of conscience is surely one of the most challenging tasks of the Christian life. For the laity, charged with the work of sanctifying the world "from within as a leaven" (in the words of Lumen gentium), this task is made especially difficult by the clamorous distractions which come simply from being in the world, even if not of the world. To ease the difficulty of this task, Monsignor Knox offers in The Layman and His Conscience a retreat specifically for lay people to "remake their minds" by the power of God's good grace. Leading his retreatants (and now readers) in a spiritual "spring-cleaning," Knox throws open the windows of the soul and lets in the pure light and fresh air of the Holy Spirit to show our sins for what they are (and are not) and their causes in our bad habits and half-baked intentions, and sets down a programme of humble habits and holy intentions to keep our consciences clean and make our lives, here and now, "fit for heaven." The last of the books prepared by Knox before his death in 1957, The Layman and His Conscience is a faithful companion to his earlier work, A Retreat for Lay People. Complementing and continuing the fine lines of spiritual insight and encouragement contained there, Knox opens the ears of the sheep to know-and love-the voice of the Good Shepherd.

The business of death has given insurance investigator Miles Bredon a unique outlook on life in this witty Golden Age mystery. Jephthah Mottram has been given some bad news from his doctor. The very rich man has only two years left to live. But he doesn’t even make it that far. While on a fishing holiday in the Midlands of England, he’s found dead of an apparent suicide by gas. Sadly, that would be the best-case scenario for Indescribable Insurance, which wouldn’t have to pay out the benefits. To that end, the company sends out its own private detective to investigate the matter. Arriving at the Load of Mischief Inn, Miles Bredon is met by a policeman with whom he served in the war, who has his own theory about the tragedy—and it is murderous. The two men make a friendly wager over who will prove their case, never expecting just how much greed and vanity can complicate a life—and a death.

The sermons of Ronald Knox, in Evelyn Waugh's estimation, contain the very best of his literary talent and pastoral sensibility. "Prepared, revised and rehearsed with every refinement of taste and skill," the sermons convey their instruction simply and directly: refreshingly conversational in tone, faithfully and knowledgably reliant on Sacred Scripture, and profoundly powerful in content, allusion, and spiritual consolation. Pastoral Sermons presents one hundred and eight superb examples of this excellent preaching. Covering nine discrete topics ("Our Father"; "The Temptations of Christ"; "The Sermon on the Mount"; "The Mystery of the Kingdom"; "The Harvest of the Cross"; "The Cross of Christ"; "The Eucharist"; "Feasts and Seasons of the Year"; and "St Paul's Gospel"), Knox fulfills his duty as a Christian teacher, instructing his listeners in the truths of the faith, the saving graces of the sacraments (especially the Eucharist), and the joyful message of Christ's own words and deeds. Comparable only with Newman's Oxford sermons in their scope and brilliance-in the words of the volume's editor, Philip Caraman, S. J.-Ronald Knox's Pastoral Sermons is a peerless manual of meditation whose balanced and graceful instructions are certain to direct its readers toward that charity and freedom which characterizes the life lived in-and for-the Lord Jesus Christ.

The sermons of Ronald Knox, in Evelyn Waugh's estimation, contain the very best of his literary talent and pastoral sensibility. "Prepared, revised and rehearsed with every refinement of taste and skill," the sermons convey their instruction simply and directly: refreshingly conversational in tone, faithfully and knowledgably reliant on Sacred Scripture, and profoundly powerful in content, allusion, and spiritual consolation. Occasional Sermons presents ninety-one examples of this excellent preaching with all the sermons from Knox's records given for notable events. Falling under the three headings of saints, occasions, and panegyrics, the sermons take as their subjects-to name but a few-Th r se of Lisieux and Charles Borromeo, Gregory the Great and Thomas Aquinas, Philip Neri and the English Martyrs; coronations, ordinations, and centenaries, jubilees, anniversaries of parishes, cathedrals, and conversions; and, in poignant tribute, G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and Knox's ordination classmate, Fr. Henry Harrington. This volume in particular proves the point expressed by Waugh that the good Monsignor had "created a new and entirely individual form for the traditional art" of preaching. Unique, from one to the next, in construction and content, Ronald Knox's Occasional Sermons are wholly similar in generously offering to its readers spiritual insight and wisdom under the beacon-light of Catholic doctrine.

The sermons of Ronald Knox, in Evelyn Waugh's estimation, contain the very best of his literary talent and pastoral sensibility. "Prepared, revised and rehearsed with every refinement of taste and skill," the sermons convey their instruction simply and directly: refreshingly conversational in tone, faithfully and knowledgably reliant on Sacred Scripture, and profoundly powerful in content, allusion, and spiritual consolation. Pastoral Sermons presents one hundred and eight superb examples of this excellent preaching. Covering nine discrete topics ("Our Father"; "The Temptations of Christ"; "The Sermon on the Mount"; "The Mystery of the Kingdom"; "The Harvest of the Cross"; "The Cross of Christ"; "The Eucharist"; "Feasts and Seasons of the Year"; and "St Paul's Gospel"), Knox fulfills his duty as a Christian teacher, instructing his listeners in the truths of the faith, the saving graces of the sacraments (especially the Eucharist), and the joyful message of Christ's own words and deeds. Comparable only with Newman's Oxford sermons in their scope and brilliance-in the words of the volume's editor, Philip Caraman, S. J.-Ronald Knox's Pastoral Sermons is a peerless manual of meditation whose balanced and graceful instructions are certain to direct its readers toward that charity and freedom which characterizes the life lived in-and for-the Lord Jesus Christ.

The sermons of Ronald Knox, in Evelyn Waugh's estimation, contain the very best of his literary talent and pastoral sensibility. "Prepared, revised and rehearsed with every refinement of taste and skill," the sermons convey their instruction simply and directly: refreshingly conversational in tone, faithfully and knowledgably reliant on Sacred Scripture, and profoundly powerful in content, allusion, and spiritual consolation. Occasional Sermons presents ninety-one examples of this excellent preaching with all the sermons from Knox's records given for notable events. Falling under the three headings of saints, occasions, and panegyrics, the sermons take as their subjects-to name but a few-Th r se of Lisieux and Charles Borromeo, Gregory the Great and Thomas Aquinas, Philip Neri and the English Martyrs; coronations, ordinations, and centenaries, jubilees, anniversaries of parishes, cathedrals, and conversions; and, in poignant tribute, G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and Knox's ordination classmate, Fr. Henry Harrington. This volume in particular proves the point expressed by Waugh that the good Monsignor had "created a new and entirely individual form for the traditional art" of preaching. Unique, from one to the next, in construction and content, Ronald Knox's Occasional Sermons are wholly similar in generously offering to its readers spiritual insight and wisdom under the beacon-light of Catholic doctrine.

A translator, comments Monsignor Ronald Knox in his On Englishing the Bible, has two methods at his disposal: the literal and the literary. In translating Sacred Scripture "for the benefit of a person who wants to be able to read the word of God for ten minutes on end without laying it aside in sheer boredom or bewilderment," then only a literary translation will suffice. And such is the "Knox Bible," the fruit of nine years' solitary labor to craft a fresh translation of the sacred texts. That labor had a strong foundation in the abiding affection for and familiarity with Scripture on display in Meditations on the Psalms. In these fifty-two meditations, Knox leads his readers "from the less to the more 'interior' levels of the spiritual life," treating on select Psalms from the Douay-Rheims Bible as they pertain to the Christian life in general and the interior life in particular; observances of the Church; and "Songs of Ascents" toward ultimate unity with God. Pope Benedict XVI once described the Psalms as a "school of prayer." With Meditations on the Psalms, Ronald Knox serves as an excellent teacher in that school, cultivating with firm faith and deep conviction the capacity to speak to God in the words that God himself has given.

In his own variation on C. S. Lewis's trilemma of "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord," Ronald Knox writes: "I do not believe that, human nature being what it is, the immediate impression made by the preaching of the Gospel could have been so profound, if its first missionaries had only told to the world the story of a Man, clearly not mad, clearly not an Impostor, who was nevertheless prepared to accept the worship due to a God." The Gospel possesses a unique power to persuade its hearers to believe in Jesus Christ, to accept the friendship of the Son of Man whose Word is Truth itself. Differing from the continuous commentary-style of his other two Slow Motion books, Knox communicates the power of the Gospel in sermons brimming with his customary freshness, ingenuity, and anecdotal brilliance. Culled by Knox himself from the extensive archives of his preaching over the years, the twenty-three sermons in The Gospel in Slow Motion offer a ready-bound retreat for religious and laity alike, for they are "Gospel" sermons in the fullest sense: their aim is the making of good Christians.

The first of Ronald Knox's three "Slow Motion" collections, The Mass in Slow Motion comprises fourteen sermons preached during World War II to the students of the Assumption Sisters at Aldenham Park. Modest yet arresting in style, Knox explains the Mass from the opening psalm to the solemn words of conclusion: Ite missa est. While the liturgy Knox contemplates is that of the Tridentine Rite, the abundant fruits of his contemplation can be easily translated to the Ordinary Form of the present day. Indeed, their primary impetus is the powerful portrayal of the continuous action of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in which formula yields to mystery and man participates in his own salvation. Along with its "Slow Motion" companions, The Mass in Slow Motion proved the most popular of Knox's writings. Evelyn Waugh called it "the ideal present for a convert of any age or intellectual equipment." More than seventy years since it first appeared in print, the truth of these words holds fast: The Mass in Slow Motion is sure to assist any Catholic-let alone any convert-to more worthily and wisely go up to the altar of the Lord.