David M. Knight

Father David M. Knight was born in Dallas, Texas, ordained a Jesuit priest in Lyon, France, and spent three years as a bush pastor in Chad (Africa). He then earned his doctorate in theology at Catholic University, Washington, D.C., and after serving as acting rector of the Jesuit novitiate in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, was made pastor of two parishes there — one black, one white — with the mission of integrating them. (This story is written up in Tanner Colby’s book Some of My Best Friends Are Black, Viking/Penguin, 2012). He was then made spiritual director for the Jesuit community of Loyola University in New Orleans. In 1973 he went to Memphis to help found a religious order of nuns, which did not succeed. But while he was engaged in this, a new provincial suggested he join the diocese of Memphis, into which he was incardinated in 1980.

Fr. Knight has taught spirituality at Catholic University University (Washington, D.C.), at Loyola University in New Orleans, Christian Brothers University in Memphis, and to ministers and seminarians of several denominations at Memphis Theological Seminary (Presbyterian).

He has been a pastor three times, has taught in both boys' and girls' high schools, including a rural black high school and a school for troubled girls under the care of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. He spent four years as a college campus minister at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, has served as Diocesan Spiritual Director of Cursillos, Diocesan Spiritual Director of the Hispanic Catholic Community of Memphis, and has been chaplain to five different communities of women religious, both active and contemplative. For several years he was a regular columnist for the Marian Helpers Bulletin. For two years he taught and discussed his books on Matthew's Gospel on the radio for an hour every Saturday morning in Spanish. He has given more than five hundred workshops, missions and retreats on the religious vows and lay spirituality, and performed ministries throughout the mainland United States, Hawaii and Alaska; and in Australia, Canada, Chad, England, Ecuador, France, Germany, Guam, Guatemala, Haiti, Ireland, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Saipan, Sierra Leone, Sweden and Spain. He has given priests' and deacons' retreats or performed other ministry in most of the United States. He speaks English, French, Spanish and German.

As of 2021, he has published four-five books, plus several booklets and manuals, and over fifty articles in twenty-nine different periodicals. His latest books are: The Way of the Spirit (2021), A Fresh Look at the Mass (2015), A Fresh Look at Confession (2013), and Nuts and Bolts of Daily Spirituality (2013).

At present he is officially retired from diocesan work but:

• teaches graduate courses in theology at Christian Brothers University in Memphis TN;

• teaches in the diocesan Institute for Liturgy and Spirituality;

• gives numerous missions and retreats in the Unites States and other countries;

• presides at Mass daily at the Monastery of St. Clare when not out of town, and supplies ministry in other parishes on demand;

• hosts retreats at His Way House in Memphis; especially the lay-led Retiros de Evangelización and retreats for the Spanish Cursillo.

• gives talks to various groups, including Jews, Catholics and Protestants, on spirituality and theology;

• engages in ecumenical outreach with ministers involved in spiritual formation;

• makes available online daily lectionary reflections for years A, B, and C of the liturgical cycle;

• normally devotes four to six hours a day to writing.