Homily - The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time / Sunday of the Word of God - 22 January 2023

The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Sunday of the Word of God

Dear brothers and sisters,

We heard the Prophet Isaiah say to us a few moments ago that “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light,” that “upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone” (Isaiah 8:1). How much darkness and gloom there is in the world today! There is, of course the darkness of winter, but even more dreadful is the darkness found in so many hearts and minds, the darkness within those who seemingly do not know happiness and who live in self-absorption. Some find themselves filled with anxiety or with bitterness, while others are filled with anger or deep hurt. They cannot find their way out of this gloom because they have lost the light. Where are they – where are we – to turn to find the light?

Several years ago, the Holy Father Pope Francis declared today, the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, be celebrated as the Sunday of the Word of God. His intention in doing so was to “enable the Church to experience anew how the risen Lord opens up for us the treasury of his word and enables us to proclaim its unfathomable riches before the world.”[1]

It is fitting that we observe this day today - this Sunday of the Word of God - because, among other things, the Scriptures remind us in the Psalms that the Word of God “is a lamp for my feet, a light for my path” (Psalm 119:105). If we wish to find our way out of the land of darkness and gloom in which we sometimes get lost, we must take up the Bible. In those holy words, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we find our light and our salvation (cf. Psalm 27:1). It is the very Word of God that illumines the path for us and leads us out of darkness to “the house of the Lord” where we can dwell eternally in the brilliance of his light and “gaze on the loveliness of the Lord,” knowing forever the fullness of happiness (Psalm 27:4).

We cannot forget that “the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord’s Body.”[2] As the Eucharist is nourishment for our souls, so are the Sacred Scriptures. This is why, within the Holy Mass, the Church “never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God’s Word and Christ’s Body.”[3] Both are necessary for us; a Christian cannot live without both the Word of God contained in the Bible and in the Eucharist.

We should open our hearts each day as we open the Bible. We should not let a single day go by without reading at least of couple of verses. If you do not know where to start, try reading at least one of the readings assigned for each day’s Mass. We should open the Word of God each day to ask the Lord to guide us in the daily tasks of life, so that in our work, studies, parenting, and play “the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its meaning” but that we might be more conformed to the Crucified and Risen Lord (I Corinthians 1:17). In this way, we can also become lights in a darkened world illuminating the way to the house of the Father, urging others to follow the way of the Lord Jesus with us (cf. Matthew 4:19).

One of the many forms of darkness afflicting our society to which each of us must bring the light of the Word of God is the realm of abortion. This cannot escape our attention, as today is the anniversary of the horrendous Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade that in 1973 made abortion legal throughout these United States of America. Thankfully, this vile decision was overturned last year on June 24^th by the decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, returning the question of the legality of abortion to state legislatures to decide. The overturning of Roe v. Wade has not given us an opportunity to rest, but has only made our local efforts all the more urgent.

Regrettably, thirty-eight states allow abortion; only 12 have made it illegal. Illinois, of course, is one of the states in which abortion is legal, having some of the strongest legal protections for abortion in the country. Some states, such as Illinois, even promote abortion. In 2020 in Illinois, the most recent year for which data is available from the Illinois Department of Public Health, 113,304 babies were born while 46,243 were aborted, 21% of which were done for non-residents of the Land of Lincoln.[4]

Of those women who ended the life of the child in their wombs, 88% were unmarried. This only serves to highlight the importance – the necessity - of marriage for a stable and loving society and for men to not only be chaste but also responsible.

It will take a great and concerted effort on the part of each one of us – men and women, adults and children – to repeal the laws in Illinois legalizing abortion. None of us can wait for others to take the lead; we must each strive to do all we can to protect the lives of every innocent and defenseless child. We must actively work to change not only laws but also hearts, to make abortion not only illegal but also – more importantly - unthinkable. We can do this by gently accompanying pregnant women who find themselves in difficult situations, supporting them both emotionally and financially, even taking them into our homes if need be.

Just as we should turn to the Word of God for guidance in each aspect of our lives, so should we turn to it as we seek to end the scourge of abortion. In the Sacred Scriptures God poses a rhetorical question to us, a question to which he also gives the answer: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you” (Isaiah 49:15). If God does not forget the unborn, neither can we. We must help women considering abortion to find the light, to see other paths out of what they perceive to be an impossible situation.

I urge you, then, to take up your Bibles each day and not let them be mere decorations on a shelf or a table. Allow the Word of God to wash over your lives every day so that together we can bring the light of the Gospel to a darkened world, warm gloomy hearts, and lead them to the house of the Father. Amen.

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[1] Pope Francis, Aperuit illis, 2.

[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 103.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Illinois Department of Public Health Birth Statistics. Accessed 21 January 2023. Available at https://dph.illinois.gov/data-statistics/vital-statistics/birth-statistics.html. Illinois Department of Public Health Abortion Statistics. Accessed 21 January 2023. Available at https://dph.illinois.gov/data-statistics/vital-statistics/abortion-statistics.html.

Homily - 9 October 2022 - The Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dear brothers and sisters,

The Psalmist today reminds us that “the Lord has made his salvation known: in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice” (Psalm 98:2). There is, then, a connection between salvation and justice, but what is this connection? Perhaps more fundamentally, what do we mean when we speak of God’s salvation and of his justice?

The first thing we can say about God’s salvation is that it began, of course, with the people of Israel, which is why the Psalmist sings, “He has remembered his kindness and his faithfulness toward the house of Israel” (Psalm 98:3).

The second thing we can say about God’s salvation is that it is universal,

but it passes through a specific historical mediation, the mediation of the people of Israel, which goes on to become that of Jesus Christ and the Church. The door of life is open for everyone, but this is the point, it is a "door", that is, a definite and necessary passage. This is summed up in the Pauline formula we heard in the Second Letter to Timothy: "the salvation in Christ Jesus" (II Timothy 2:10)… God is love and wants all men to be part of His life; to carry out this plan He, who is Triune, creates in the world a mystery of a communion that is human and divine, historical and transcendent: He creates it with the method so to speak of the Covenant, tying himself to men with faithful and inexhaustible love, forming a holy people, that becomes a blessing for all the families of the earth (cf. Genesis 12:13).[1]

This is what we call the economy of salvation, the means throughout time by which God has chosen to redeem us, forgive us, and restore us to everlasting friendship in his presence.

The third thing we can say about the salvation of God is that it can be lost; God’s restorative and merciful forgiveness can be refused. We see an example of a rejection of the healing of God in Naaman’s initial refusal to follow the command of God given through his prophet Elisha (cf. II Kings 5:11).

What, then, can we say of God’s justice? The first thing we can say is what Saint Thomas Aquinas says, namely, that “in God, power, essence, will, intellect, wisdom, and justice are all identical.”[2] Indeed, whatever attribute we can find in the Godhead is identical with any other attribute we can find in the Trinity. His goodness is his beauty; his mercy is his justice.

The second thing we can say here is that God not only is justice, but that God creates justice, the virtue of giving to each person what is due to him or her. Just as our civil courts seek to do justice – at least in theory – to each person according to what he or she has done, so will God mete out justice to each of us at the end of our lives. We know that “faith in Christ has never looked merely backwards or merely upwards, but always also forwards to the hour of justice that the Lord repeatedly proclaimed.”[3]

The fact of the Last Judgment, in which the salvation of God is known in the demonstration of his mercy and his justice, makes clear that 

 

the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ's Passion. At the moment of judgment we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy.[4]

The mercy and justice of God are brought together in the Cross of Jesus Christ through which we receive the salvation of God. Please bear with me now for a few moments as I pivot my thoughts; I promise we will return to the question of God’s salvation and justice.

Last Sunday, as we entered into this Respect Life Month, I reminded you of the painfully sad statistic that in Illinois in 2020 the lives of 46,243 unborn babies were intentionally ended in their mothers’ wombs, in that very place which should be the safest place for any child on earth[5]. I reminded you that this number is very likely only to increase as neighboring states continue to either restrict or to ban abortion. Consequently, we must step up our efforts to end the barbaric and inhuman scourge of abortion in this Land of Lincoln.

I mention this again today because yesterday afternoon I saw something in my hometown that would have been inconceivable a few years ago and even last year: a group of about twenty women standing along the principle street protesting the recent Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson. With this decision, the Justices returned the question of the legality of abortion to the State legislatures, where, constitutionally, it should have remained all along. (Here we must remember not everything that is legal is moral.)

Many people do not understand what the Dobbs v. Jackson decision said, which is why those women were holding the usual lame euphemistic signs saying such laughable things as, “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries” and “Stay out of my womb.” I have never considered putting my rosary on any woman’s ovaries, and, frankly, I have no idea how I would do so even if I wanted to. The only womb I have ever been in is that of my mother (and that was forty-four years ago). Those women seemingly do not know what the law is in Illinois regarding abortion.

Putting humor aside, my heart broke for these women and tears filled my eyes as I drove past them because in their refusal to live in accordance with their bodies – in violation of the evident will of the Creator - they are placing their salvation at risk by challenging God’s justice for the innocent. Their hearts are filled with that “pride and selfishness that spawn indifference, hatred and violence in the human soul. No one, save God who is Love, can heal this leprosy of the spirit which scars the face of humanity.”[6]

For those who kill the innocent and for those who advocate the killing of the innocent, God’s justice will be revealed on the Last Day. For those who repent of such unjust acts against the innocent, God’s salvation will be revealed on the Last Day. You and I must do what we can to help those who advocate for abortion and who participate in abortion to see the error of their ways and beg the Lord to bring to repentance and conversion of heart; we must do so with gentleness, with honesty, and with genuine concern for the salvation of their souls.

One of the ways we can help in this effort, is to counter their arguments and correct their errors. At this moment in history, chief among their arguments is that we only care about the unborn child and not about the mother or what happens to either of them after the child is born. This, of course, is an unfounded claim, but if we are to convincingly refute it, we must be able to demonstrate our concern for the mother and her child in concrete ways. This is why I have resolved to make an ongoing monthly gift to First Step Women’s Center in Springfield because I know they will use it well to provide for mothers in difficult situations.

What is it that you can do? Perhaps you can volunteer to drive a woman to appointments with her doctors or to school or to work. Perhaps you can offer to watch her child while she cleans her home or goes to work or even takes a much-needed break. Perhaps you can offer to build something her home needs or to mow her lawn or shovel her drive. Perhaps you have a spare room that would be suitable for a young mother and her infant who has nowhere else to go.

These are all ways each of us can show our love not only for unborn children, but also for their mothers and for them as they grow older; they are also ways that you and I can become expressions of the mercy of God. Perhaps, by God’s grace and through our loving examples, we can lead those who advocate for abortion on demand to turn to Jesus, the healer of souls, to ask for his salvation and forgiveness. If they do, they will break out in song because “all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation by our God” and their heavy hearts will become light (Psalm 98:3). Amen.

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[1] Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, 10 October 2010.

[2] Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 25, 5, ad. 1.

[3] Pope Benedict XVI, Spe salvi, 41.

[4] Pope Benedict XVI, Spe salvi, 47.

[5] Illinois Department of Public Health, “Abortion Statistics.” Accessed 1 October 2022. Available at https://dph.illinois.gov/data-statistics/vital-statistics/abortion-statistics.html.

[6] Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 14 October 2007.

Homily on Guardian Angels and the Respect for Life

Dear brothers and sisters,

It may seem strange to say so, but the Gospel passage Mother Church provides for us today contains one of my favorite verses: “We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do” (Luke 17:10). Another translation of the Greek text puts it perhaps into easier English: “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.”

This particular verse really should be one of the guiding principles of each of our lives. If we keep this verse ever in our hearts, it reminds us of an important truth: we are not the lords and ladies of our own lives. We are but mere creatures, whose existence is entirely dependent on the will of the Creator. As such, we must strive to serve him and to live in accord with his will for us.

When he considered this verse, Saint Ambrose – the spiritual father of Saint Augustine – said:

Know that you are a servant overwhelmed by very much obedience. You must not set yourself first, because you are called a son of God. Grace must be acknowledged, but nature not overlooked. Do not boast of yourself if you have served well, as you should have done.[1]

We are called neither to mediocrity nor to self-indulgence or self-promotion. Our society today gets this wrong and so produces very much unhappiness.

There are other creatures, however, who do find joy in being obedient to the will of God and who never boast of their service to the divine majesty. These are the angels. The angels know what we often forget, namely, that “obedience is pure when a command obliges simply because it was commanded, and for no other reason.”[2] Our obedience to God is often impure because, when we are obedient, it is often with grumbling, moaning, and complaining, and with hardened hearts (cf. Psalm 95:8-9).

If today were not Sunday, we would be observing the memorial of the Guardian Angels, whom J.R.R. Tolkien referred to as “God’s very attention itself, personalized.” He went so far as to say, “And I do not mean ‘personified,’ by a mere figure of speech according to the tendencies of human language, but a real (finite) person.”[3]

We often associate Guardian Angels with children, and rightly so. Consequently, in this Respect Life month, how can we not consider the more than 63 million babies aborted in these United States of American since the wrongly decided Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade? When the Supreme Court recently decided Dobbs v. Jackson, the Justices rightly overturned the previous court decision, returning to the question of the legality of abortion to each State of the Union. There was – rightly – much rejoicing among those of us in the pro-life movement, but our work here in Illinois has now only just begun.

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, 46,243 babies were aborted in 2020, more than the population of my hometown; figures for 2021 are not yet available[4]. Since Illinois has some of the strongest laws favoring abortion in the nation, we can expect this lamentable figure to increase as neighboring states continue to either restrict or to ban abortion. What can we do to reduce these numbers? How can we increase our efforts to care for unborn babies and for their mothers, who all too often find themselves in horribly difficult circumstances with no one to support them and see no other option? We must not only continue to do what we have been doing, but also find new and creative to personally reach out to babies, mothers, and fathers because this is what the Lord Jesus has given us to do, to love our neighbors as ourselves (cf. Matthew 19:19).

We may be tempted to think that we cannot do very much to change the culture of death so prevalent in our state; such thoughts of discouragement do not come from God. We may not be able to effect a great change across the state, but we can certainly effect a great change in the life of an individual woman, child, or man. We cannot forget that while “it is not our part to master all the tides of the world but to do what is in us for the succor [help] of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.”[5]

As I said a moment ago, we often think of Guardian Angels as something for children to be concerned about and not adults, but this is not the case. Mother Church, basing herself on Sacred Scripture and the words of Jesus, teaches us that “from its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession” (cf. Matthew 18:10).[6] Each aborted child has a Guardian Angel, as does each mother and father of these children and the doctors and nurses who participated in it. How can their Guardian Angels have allowed them to take part in such grave evil?

When God assigns Guardian Angels to individual humans, he gives them a particular mission: “to watch over human beings, to whom they minister by purifying, illuminating, and perfecting them as God’s will commands.”[7] Their mission to purify, to illumine, and to perfect us is not carried out by force, but by urging and guiding us to choose what is good and reject what is evil in every aspect of life; in all that they do, Guardian Angels respect our freedom.

Just as it is possible to ignore or even reject the will of God, so it is also possible to ignore or even reject the promptings of these “ministers of divine care for every human being.”[8] We can be sure that those individuals who have participated in an abortion were not following the guidance of their Guardian Angels. We can also be sure that we are not following the promptings of our Guardian Angels when we fail to defend the unborn and come to the aid of mothers and fathers in crisis pregnancies.

In this Respect Life month, I urge, ask, and beg you to speak with your Guardian Angel so that you might discern how the Lord is calling you to help spread the Gospel of Life and remain obedient to God, especially in the most difficult situations of life, from conception to natural death. We become unprofitable and unworthy servants of God when we imitate his personalized attention and care for every human being, and, with the angels, see the beauty, truth, goodness of God’s commands, because we also have our eyes fixed on him, just as his eyes have always been fixed on us, no matter how small we are.

Each of our Guardian Angels can rightly say to God, “We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.” May the same be true of you and of me so that we might rejoice before the Face of God with our Guardian Angels forever. Amen.

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[1] Saint Ambrose of Milan, Exposition on the Gospel of Luke, 8.31.

[2] Saint Bonaventure, Breviloquium, 2.11.5.

[3] J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter to Christopher Tolkien, 7-8 November 1944.

[4] Illinois Department of Public Health, “Abortion Statistics.” Accessed 1 October 2022. Available at https://dph.illinois.gov/data-statistics/vital-statistics/abortion-statistics.html.

[5] J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, 5.IX.

[6] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 336.

[7] Saint Bonaventure, Breviloquium, 2.8.1.

[8] Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 2 October 2011.

Homily - 27 September 2020 - The Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

 Dear brothers and sisters,

Saint Paul addresses us today, saying, “If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, and compassion and mercy…” (Philippians 2:1). He does not use these phrases in a hypothetical or theoretical manner because he knows that there is encouragement in Christ; the knows there is solace in love; he knows there is participation in the Spirit; he knows the compassion and mercy of the Lord Jesus. On the road to Damascus and in the many persecutions he endured for Christ, he has experienced all of this because he had in himself “the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus” who became “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5, 8). Have we experienced what he did? Do we know what he knew?

Regrettably, a great many people – both in our nation and throughout the world – have not experienced encouragement in Christ or solace in love, nor have they participated in the Spirit and found compassion and mercy. Because they think they “see the end beyond all doubt,” they fall into despair.[1] This is why there is an ever-greater push for so-called euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. Too many people have lost hope and turn inward on themselves. Instead of giving in to despair when life becomes difficult, we must remember that “pain and death do not constitute the ultimate measures of the human dignity that is proper to every person by the very fact that they are ‘human beings.’”[2]

To be sure, “it is hard to recognize the profound value of human life when we see it in its weakness and fragility.”[3] Even so, the value of human life is perhaps evident to us when we are at our weakest and most fragile because it is precisely in these moments when most seriously ponder the meaning and purpose of it all. In these moments, we see that

Each person’s vulnerability is encoded in our nature as a unity of body and soul: we are materially and temporally finite, and yet we have a longing for the infinite and a destiny that is eternal. As creatures who are by nature finite, yet nonetheless destined for eternity, we depend on material goods and on the mutual support of other person, and also on our original, deep connection with God. Our vulnerability forms the basis for an ethics of care, especially in the medical field, which is expressed in concern, dedication, shared participation and responsibility towards the women and men entrusted to us for material and spiritual assistance in their hour of need.[4]

 We might say that at weak in our moments of vulnerability is

a contemplative gaze that beholds in one’s own existence and that of others a unique and unrepeatable wonder, received and welcomed as a gift. This is the gaze of the one who does not pretend to take possession of the reality of life but welcomes it as it is, with its difficulties and sufferings, and, guided by faith, finds in illness the readiness to abandon oneself to the Lord of life who is manifest therein.[5]

“The Church affirms that the positive meaning of human life is something already knowable by right reason, and in the light of faith is confirmed and understood in its inalienable dignity.”[6] Living as we do in a society that only seems to look for the bad and the negative, too many have lost sight of the goodness of life itself. “Life is the first good because it is the basis for the enjoyment of every other good including the transcendent vocation to share the trinitarian love of the living God to which every human being is called.”[7] If we are help those who suffer find encouragement in Christ, solace in love, and to participate in the Spirit so as to receive compassion and mercy, then we must look with them to the Cross of Christ.

Too often those who are ill “often seem as a burden to society; their questions are not answered; [and] they often undergo forms of affective desertion and the loss of connection with others,” which is especially heightened during these days of COVID.[8] “Add to this is the suffering caused when society equates their value as persons to their quality of life and makes them feel like a burden to others.”[9] We must help them to recognize that they are each a unique and unrepeated wonder and never a burden, but how can we do this? By helping them understand that “Christ’s experience resonates with the sick.”[10]

Whenever we feel abandoned or as a burden to others, whenever life becomes painful and difficult, it is important and necessary

to turn one’s gaze to Christ … to him who experienced in his flesh the pain of the lashes and nails, the derision of those who scourged him, and the abandonment and betrayal of those closest to him. In the face of the challenge of illness and the emotional and spiritual difficulties associated with pain, one must necessarily know how to speak a word of comfort drawn from the compassion of Jesus on the Cross…

 

In the Cross of Christ are concentrated and recapitulated all the sickness and suffering of the world: all the physical suffering, of which the Cross, that instrument of an infamous and shameful death, is the symbol; all the psychological suffering, expressed in the death of Jesus in the darkest of solitude, abandonment, and betrayal; all the moral suffering, manifested in the condemnation to death of one who is innocent; all the spiritual suffering, displayed in a desolation that seems like the very silence of God.[11] 

It is precisely in his Cross that we find encouragement in Christ and solace in love; it is precisely in the Cross that we can participate in the Spirit and receive compassion and mercy.

What is more, it is in the Cross that we see that “the end of life is a time of relationships, a time when loneliness and abandonment must be defeated in the obedient offering of one’s life to God.”[12] “In a time when autonomy and individualism are acclaimed, it must be remembered that, while it is true that everyone lives their own suffering, their own pain and their own death, these experiences always transpire in the presence of others and under their gaze.”[13] Just as the Blessed Mother and Saint John both remained at the foot of the Cross, near to Jesus during his deepest suffering, we, too, must remain near those who are sick and who are in pain because the “Love of God always makes itself known in the history of men and women, thanks to the love of the one who never deserts us, who ‘remains,’ despite everything, at our side.”[14] 

In this manner, although marked by a painful passing, death can become the occasion of a greater hope that, thanks to faith, makes us participants in the redeeming work of Christ. Pain is existentially bearable only where there is hope. The hope that Christ communicates to the sick and the suffering is that of his presence, of his true nearness. Hope is not only the expectation of a greater good, but is a gaze on the present full of significance. In the Christian faith, the event of the Resurrection not only reveals eternal life, but it makes manifest that in history the last word never belongs to death, pain, betrayal, and suffering. Christ rises in history, and in the mystery of the Resurrection the abiding love of the Father is confirmed.

 

To contemplate the living experience of Christ’s suffering is to proclaim to men and women of today a hope that imparts meaning to the time of sickness and death. From this hope springs the love that overcomes the temptation to despair.[15] 

We must help to instill within those who suffer so greatly this hope borne from love, to find encouragement in Christ, solace in love, participation in the Spirit, and compassion and mercy. 

All of this forms the backdrop behind the Church’s continued denunciation of the horrors of abortion and euthanasia and physician assisted suicide, each of which the Holy See said this past week “poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator.”[16] If you heard anything about this recent statement in the document Samaritanus Bonus, what you likely heard was that Church again said no to euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. This is true – and no surprise – but when the Church says no to the purposeful killing of an innocent human life, she does so because she says yes to every human life; she reaffirms time and again that every human person is a unique and unrepeatable wonder made by and for Love. May each of us remain with those who suffer; may we help them the understand the beauty of God’s love shown for us on the Cross; may we help them realize they are not a burden, but a unique and unrepeatable wonder. Amen.

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[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of the Lord of the Rings (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994), 262.

[2] Samaritanus Bonus, Introduction.

[3] Ibid., I.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., III.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., II.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid., III.