Prayer for Vocation

21 April 2010 Saint Anselm

Bishop and Doctor of the Church.

I am reading the newest biography of RONALD KNOX. (Ronald Knox and English Catholicism by T. Tastard).

It suggests a parallel to Saint Anselm.

The experience of Ronald Knox echoes the similar hindering to the pathway of their vocation.

At this Mass, the queue of St Anselm and link with Ronald KNOX inspire us to pray for vocations of the like.

Both of them were hindered on their path by their kindred. At the same time the unrelenting attraction of Christ drew them on their single purposefulness.

We know of such and pray for such vocation in our monastic community.

Background:

• Saint Anselm at the age of fifteen, desired to enter a monastery but could not obtain his father's consent, and so the abbot refused him. Disappointment brought on apparent psychosomatic illness. After recovery, he gave up his studies and lived a carefree life. During this period, his mother died and his father's harshness became unbearable.
• When he was twenty-three, Anselm left home, crossed the Alps and wandered through Burgundy and France. Attracted by the fame of his countryman Lanfranc (then prior of the Benedictine Abbey of Bec), Anselm arrived in Normandy in 1059. The following year, after some time at Avranches, he entered the abbey as a novice at the age of twenty-seven; in doing so he submitted himself to the Rule of Saint Benedict, which was to reshape his thought over the next decade.
• 
  
• Ronnie Knox grew in the life and culture of the Church England and then immersed Anglo-Catholic observance.
  
• 
  
• In October 1906 he went to Balliol College , Oxford . In that context Knox joined a group of youngish dons.
• “When Knox joined a group of youngish dons who met regu larly for Friday lunch and discussion of theological issues, he found that German scholarship had strongly influenced them. They tended towards a progressive interpretation of theology. He also heard that seven of the group were collaborating on a volume of essays giving a contemporary restatement of Christian belief. Of the seven, five would become bishops; one of them, William Temple, was a future Archbishop of Canterbury. The book would be published in November 1912 as Foundations with the subtitle A Statement of Christian Belief in Terms of Modern Thought In 1912 Knox went again to the monastery at Caldey for most of the summer, like the preceding year. As he prayed and read he found himself brooding about the forthcomingFoundations. Gradually he worked out a counter-blast: Absolute and Abitofhell, a long pasquinade or lampoon poem written in the manner of Dryden. Knox began by sketching the modernizing tendency in the Church of England: . .” (Ronald Knox and English Catholicism p. 51)
  
• 
  
• “The articles he wrote for the popular press appeared regularly in the London Evening Standard and in the Weekly Dispatch. Often they were musings on the ordinary incidents and demands of life, sometimes whimsical in nature, sometimes with a lightly disguised seriousness. The light touch and the evident good humour draw the reader along. Almost anything could set off his train of thought: recovery from an attack of jaundice, the dating of Easter, a proposal to ban smoking, a limerick, the country paths of Hertfordshire, proverbs of the past, the sound of the cuckoo. Many of them deal with trains, such as one on the etiquette of seating yourself in a railway carriage: . . .” (Teacher and Preacher p.111).

In the new Internet age, Ronnie Knox, would have delighted in the “musings on the ordinary incidents” in Blogs, Twitters etc.

Bibliography:

• The Life of The Right Reverend Ronald Knox Evelyn Waugh, 1959 Chapman & Hall
• The Knox Brothers Penelope Fitzgerald, 1977 Coward, McCann & Geoghegan
• Ronald Knox, the Priest Thomas Corbishley, 1964 Sheed & Ward
• Ronald Knox, the Writer Robert Speaight, 1966 Sheed & Ward
• The Quotable Knox 1996 Ignatius Press
• Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan John Hardon, S.J, 1989 Grotto Press
• Literary Converts Joseph Pearce, 2000 Ignatius Press
• Ronald Knox As Apologist Milton Thomas Walsh, 2007 Ignatius Press
• The Detective Stories of Ronald A.Knox William Reynolds, 1981 The Armchair Detective
• English Spiritual Writers, from Aelfric of Eynsham to Ronald Knox ed. Charles Davis, 1961 Sheed & Ward
  

After 50 years:

Ronald Knox and English Catholicism by Terry Tastard (Paperback - Sept. 1, 2009)

For the Year of St. Paul

The Catholic Truth Society has republished a series of Lenten talks by Ronald Knox entitled St.Paul's Gospel. These sermons are included in Pastoral and Occasional Sermons but this new CTS edition is a nice, inexpensive introduction to Knox - if you happen to be in the vicinity of Westminster Cathedral & the CTS bookstore!

The Gospel of Paul
Catholic Truth Society 2008