Customer Reviews

Pastoral and Occasional Sermons

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If you want to be REALLY unhappy with the quality of homiletics in your parish church, read these. Of course, Msgr. Knox was never average, even in his own time.

I would rate the book as a book down because the type is too small, but that's the way of the world these days. It's worth the eyestrain.

Ronald Knox was a brilliant homilist and writer. This book is an excellent collection of some of his best works. The book provides ideas for both homilies and meditation. Rather than read the book cover to cover, my approach is to pick topics coincident with the liturgical year or of interest. The book has over 1000 pages and it takes some time to go through it. The sermons are easy to read and relatively short. Knox was a Catholic convert and like many converts his love for his new religion clearly shows through in each of his writings.
While I liked this book, consideration should also be given to Prayers, Verses, and Devotions and to Parochial and Plain Sermons (2) by Cardinal John Henry Newman. In my opinion, these two books by Newman are better than the book by Knox. Newman was a very exceptional person and his sermons, prayers, verses, and devotions are outstanding. Rather than compare Knox to Newman my suggestion is to buy all three books and use them to enrich one's spiritual life. This book by Knox is a valuable addition to my spiritual library.

The good Msgr. Ronald Knox said "we are here to colonize heaven, not make things better on earth." This sobering reality check is reminiscent of countless sage passages in his Pastoral and Occasional Sermons. Knox's writing style is elegant, direct, incisive and every word is rooted in Biblical Truth. Read a sermon a day and let the good Msgr. take you on a tour down avenues of truth that have long been forgotten in our age.
Reading these sermons is like sitting down with a wise old uncle. He will explain Jesus' words and the Gospel message like so few are able to. This volume is highly recommended and will surely be a source of joy, a comfort, and a voice of sanity in these sad, insecure and insane times.

This book of compiled sermons by Monsignor Ronald Knox would be of great value, spiritually, for anyone trying to live a life on earth as Our Lord and Saviour would want us to live (completely surrendering ourselves to His will and trusting in the help of His Divine Graces throughout the remainder of our life, the dispensation of which He has entrusted to His Mother and ours, the Blessed Virgin Mary). The same can be said of Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman's writings. Newman's are a bit more intricate (deep, if you will). Monsignor Knox's sermons reached the core of my heart no less than Cardinal Newman's, but in a slightly more understandable manner. This, I would suppose, is because Knox's are written between 1929 & the mid-1950s. His english wording is more modern than Newman's. Hence, easier for us to digest.

Also, many of Monsignor Knox's sermons were written between WWI & WWII. A very interesting perspective on the world society's perspective of life and their relationships with God is quite evident in Knox's writings due to this rather obscure timeframe.

I highly recommend this book to all those to who the first sentence of my review applies.