This book is the first in Fr. Knight's treatment of the
Gospel of Matthew. This book expands the theme of Evangelization or the
good news about Jesus Christ through a study of Matthew's Gospel, chapter
1-2 and 8-9. What did Jesus come to do as Savior? Do we experience Him
now as saving our existence from destructiveness, distortion,
meaninglessness and mediocrity?
Fr. David M. Knight is an internationally recognized authority
on both religious life and the spirituality of the laity. He has been a
pastor three times and diocesan Spiritual Director of Cursillos. He has
given more than four hundred workshops, missions and retreats on lay
spirituality and on the religious vows throughout the United States and
Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, Peru and Guatemala. He holds a
Master's Degree in philosophy and a Doctorate in Theology. He has taught
spirituality at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., at Loyola
University in New Orleans, Christian Brothers University in Memphis, and
at the Memphis Theological Seminary (Presbyterian). Currently he is
pastor of Sacred Heart Church and spiritual director of the Hispanic
Community of Memphis. He has written thirty-two books.
Fr. Knight's books are the fruit of his experience. After his
ordination in 1961 he spent three years as a bush pastor in Chad
(Africa). He then earned a Doctorate in Theology at Catholic University
and was made pastor two parishes - one black, one white - with the
mission of integrating them. He has been a pastor three times, has taught
in both boys' and girls' high schools, including a rural black high
school and school of girls under the care of the Sisters of the Good
Shepherd. He spent four years as a campus minister at Christian Brothers
University, and has been chaplain to five different communities of women
religious, both active and contemplative. He has given priests' retreats
or performed other ministry in over half the dioceses of the United
States and in forty states, including Hawaii and Alaska.
For the ten years after Vatican II Fr. Knight gave workshops and
retreats on the religious vows based on his book Cloud by Day, Fire by
Night. He then wrote the landmark book on the spirituality of the laity,
His Way, which has sold over 150,00 copies and been used in renewal
programs in dioceses throughout the country. Since then his focus has
been on pastoral plans and programs of spiritual growth among the laity.
He believes there is a hunger for spiritual growth today and that
dioceses and parishes should respond to this hunger with long-term,
consistent programs of spiritual formation which build on each other in a
progressively challenging way. The development of such programs, and
their integration into parish life and ministry, is the goal of his life.
