Why Jesus : Exploring Relationship with Jesus (Gospel of Matthew Spiritual Growth Program)

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.