The day after Easter, I was rereading Benedict XVI’s new and brilliant encyclical, Spe Salvi. I have three different copies of this remarkable document, one printed from the Vatican on-line system, one from L’Osservatore Romano, English, and a bound version published by Pauline Books and Media.

The Anglo-Welsh poet and artist David Jones (1895-1974) spoke on the BBC Welsh Home Service on the 29th of October, 1954. His talk, entitled an “Autobiographical Talk,” was reprinted in his “Epoch and Artist: Selected Writings.” This book was given to me for Christmas. Just recently I began to look at it.

Recently, as my patient students know, I was sidelined with a bout of pneumonia.
Relax, I am not going to tell you about how well I suffer, because I don’t, or the details of my illness, of which not even I have the faintest comprehension.

Plato was 40 years old (388 B.C.), as he tells us in his “Seventh Letter.” The Peloponnesian War had ended in 404. The Greek colony of Syracuse on Sicily was in the ascendancy. Along with Sparta, Syracuse was the victor in the infamous war launched by Athens, under the prodding on by the charming and rather unscrupulous Alcibiades.