Msgr. Knox and the Word of the Lord

The Catholic Thing

By John Emmet Clarke:
But first a note from Robert Royal: Our great Catholic thing, the whole historical reality of the Faith, is so wonderful that, as I never get tired of saying, there's nothing like it. I won't indulge in a prideful boast and claim that The Catholic Thing is likely without compare, but some might. In any case, we're in our last fundraising days. We need one more push. Click the button, dear readers. Make sure that what you've valued reading these past years is here, in its full array, in 2025.
Now for today's column...
"The Word of the Lord" is a phrase regularly and reliably heard throughout the Church Year. When we hear it and reflexively reply: "Thanks be to God." And this is only right and just, since no response other than heartfelt gratitude is fitting in the face of so great a mystery as the utterances of the one true God.
As it was to the prophets of old, the Word of the Lord comes to us, condescending to our lowliness, casting light into our darkness, and cultivating the shallow, rocky, and sunburnt soil of our minds, hearts, and spirits. That's what we're about to celebrate next week.
Yet how often does the Word come to me and I know it not? How commonly does it come to me and find my mind uninterested and my heart unfeeling towards its revelations?
For myself, the answers are, sadly, "Quite often," and "Quite commonly." In my defense, I can only offer that the Word of the Lord is not always readily intelligible or immediately interesting. And the average quality of homiletic interpretations and explanations are (and I mean this in all charity) uninspiring.
So there's a twofold problem. I know full well that I'm making a poor defense, a shoot-the-messenger defense, all the more impoverished since the messengers are either (or both) the Lord Himself who speaks, or His priest who preaches.
"The purpose of our lives is to reveal God to men," Pope Benedict XVI declared in his first homily as pope. This goal is only possible because God revealed Himself to us. Christ asks Peter, "Who do you say that I am?" And Peter can answer truly because the true answer actually exists. Indeed, the answer has already been spoken: its Word stands before Peter, in the flesh, the guarantor that the correct answer can be known - and given.
Thus, when the Word of the Lord comes to us and we understand it not; when it is brought to us and misconstrued, mishandled, or mistreated; when it is uttered, whether by us or by others, and God is not revealed, that failure is not the final word. God is who He says He is, not who we say.
The passing on of that revelation - which is what we mean, or ought to mean, whenever we invoke "the tradition" - is not dependent upon our capabilities or creativity, but on the openness of our hearts to receive the heavenly gift which is the Word of the Lord. Once received, the benefits are ours, the glory is His.
Few of God's servants have testified to this truth as simply yet profoundly as Monsignor Ronald Knox.
Perhaps the most famous Anglican con-vert to the Catholic Church since St. John Henry Newman, Knox served the Church and various flocks with zeal: offering hundreds of retreats, writing dozens of books, completing his own translation of the Bible, and embracing to the full the priestly life, which he loved.
Sixty-odd years since his death have done nothing to diminish the power of his preaching. It is no coincidence, in my mind, that the source of that power is the Word of the Lord - the books of Sacred Scripture.
Of the almost 209 sermons that comprise the best of his preaching (the Pastoral Sermons and Occasional Sermons, now available in new editions), all but 23 have a Biblical epigraph. Regardless of the occasion (Sunday, saints' feast days, secular holidays) or the congregation (rural parishioners, university students, schoolchildren), the inspiration and substance is steadfastly the same: God as He has revealed himself to us in Sacred Scripture.
These sermons are strong meat in...