By Ronald Knox

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 knowledgeably 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. 

You do not want to be a priest who simply does his job and knows his rubrics and hopes to pay off a bit of the parish debt. You want to be an ambassador from God to men, ready to take every opening, to follow up every trail, where there is a human conscience to be enlightened or a lost soul to be won back. (Ronald Knox)

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.

Ronald Knox (1888–1957) was an English Catholic priest, theologian, and author, and one of the most prominent twentieth-century converts from Anglicanism to Catholicism. Best known for his contemporary English translation of the Scriptures (the “Knox Bible”), he wrote numerous works of apologetics and collections of ser­mons, retreat conferences, and lectures, as well as six detective novels.

* * *

Paperback: 524pp.

ISBN: 978-1685952938