Ronald Knox on how to think of Paul's epistles

"So let's try and think of the Epistle, always, as a personal letter sent to us from St. Paul, or one of the other apostles, who is a long way away, but still very much interested in us. Take that Epistle this morning—there's nothing there, I think, St. Paul wouldn't be wanting to say, isn't wanting to say, to you or me. 'We have been praying for you, ' he says, 'unceasingly'; of course he has; the saints in Heaven go on praying all the time, and they pray for all Christian people. He has been praying that you and I may have a closer knowledge of God's will; that you and I may live as God's servants, waiting continually on his pleasure; that you and I may be inspired with full strength, to be patient and to endure; isn't that nice of him? We feel inclined to say "Hurrah!" at the end of it; only we don't say it; we just think "Hurrah!" when the server says Deo Gratias."

—Ronald Knox, The Mass in Slow Motion (Aeterna Press, 2014 [1948]), 26