Ronald Knox Lightning Meditations

Our Pheasant Family

On the lawn a Cock Pheasant strides in glory, croaks in alert and keeps guard on the hen and her clutch of chicks in the tree shelter.

“Lord, you know all things; you can tell that I love you.”. Jn. 21:17 Lightning Meditations – Ronald Knox (Sheed & Ward) 1959. Heart and Head c.xxxvi pp73-74. LIGHTNING MEDITATIONS - CHAPTER XXXVI Heart and Head THE Church describes the heart of her Incarnate Lord as a treasure-house of all wisdom and knowledge. Most evidently, the popular devotion which tinges our prayer during the month of June is a devotion to the whole of our Lord's sacred humanity, not to one single part or aspect of it. That we should treat the Sacred Heart as the symbol of his emotional nature is not surprising. The language of lovers has claimed the heart for its symbol ever since the Middle Ages, and we have learned, in consequence, to treat it as the centre of the feelings, relegating the intellect to the head. The "heart-work" which John Wesley was for ever vindicating against its critics was precisely the enlistment of the emotions in the service of religion. But from the beginning it was not so. To the Hebrews, as to the Romans, the heart was the seat of the intellect; "My son, give me thy heart" is only an appeal for the pupil's attention, and the "largeness of heart" granted to King Solomon was wisdom, not sensibility. This habit of speech is found in the New Testament as in the Old; nor is the distinction between head and heart observed in the liturgy, where cor and mens seem to be almost interchangeable. Have we a right to limit the range of the Sacred Heart by making it a symbol of our Lord's human tenderness, nothing else? It is well that the sinner should find pardon, the mourner comfort, in the source from which pardon came to the Magdalen, comfort to the widow of Nairn. But there are other burdens that may be cast, if we will, on those patient shoulders. There is (for example) a kind of intellectual fatigue which overtakes us when we are introduced to the daring speculations of modern sci­ence; we cannot understand the very terms of them. Well, here is the effigy of that Heart which is the treasure-house of all wisdom and all knowledge. We have found a fresh avenue of approach; “Lord, you know all things; you can tell that I love you.”. Jn. 21:17. (Knox ‘you’ version). _____________________________________________________ Lightning Meditations by RONALD KNOX - Dust Jacket (Philip Garaman SJ) - For more than twelve years Ronald Knox con­tributed a monthly short sermon to the Sunday Times, and in 195"I seventy-one of these were for the first time collected in a book, which he called Stimuli (which a Dutch review charmingly trans­lated for its readers as "Stikkels, prikkels"); and in the Introduction he warned readers that for all their typical urbanity these sermons did indeed contain Stikkels and Prikkels "ready to pierce the skin of your conscience, though it be as tough to kick the goad as the university of Tarsus can make it". But of course, it would have been most unlike Ronald Knox if this book had consisted merely of scoldings. There was plenty of comfort as well as admonition; one never lost sight of the fact that this was one of us talking, and had therefore that much less inclination to dismiss what was being said as altogether too lofty for one's own humble plane. This second collection contains sermons of a later date than those published in Stimuli; there is, of course, the same urbanity and the same sharpness, but in addition there is that much more practice in doing the thing perfectly; and, that, with a craftsman as expert as Ronald Knox, means something quite considerable. The title is strictly to the point; each example lights up our conscience like a flash of lightning. No word has been altered from the text as the author preserved it in his carefully kept cuttings; occasionally a footnote has been added to supply a date or a reference. Otherwise this is pure Knox in every sense.