A Retreat for Beginners
By Ronald Knox Monsignor Ronald Knox preached scores, if not hundreds, of retreats. Of these, A Retreat for Beginners is singular: for, in Knox’s own declaration, it is addressed not to a crowd, but to one particular soul—to you. The point of a retreat is that God means to do something in and to the soul; God, in this time of quiet, intends to conduct a spring-cleaning of sorts in the retreatant’s spiritual life, illuminating a particular fault, loosening the fetters of some foul habit or unhealthy friendship, or introducing some fresh means of serving Him. This Divine housekeeping takes place as the mind and soul are refreshed with the waters of good Christian teaching. Knox distributes this water generously, with twenty-two reflections on central truths and mysteries of the Faith, including the Divine Nature and the Incarnation; original sin and personal sin; the Holy Mass and the Blessed Sacrament; prayer and the Rosary; personal vocation and vocation to the priesthood; and the La