Daniel O'Connor's Blog

(Fore-note: I will be speaking this Saturday at a Conference on the Divine Will in Vancouver (Canada). If anyone in that area is interested in attending, more information can be found here.)

Origen, a Father of the Church, writes the following about the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which we heard at Mass this past Sunday:

(Taken from Homilies on Luke. CUA Press, 2010. Page 138. Note that the “beast” is what the translation read at Mass refers to as the “animal” upon whom the Samaritan places the man who fell victim to robbers. )

This understanding, of course, is not in the least intended to diminish the importance of the more obvious meaning of the parable: the necessity of charity, compassion, and works of mercy, and the emptiness of superficial piety and religiosity that neglects these fundamentals.  And yet, how sad it is that this understanding of the Fathers of the Church is likely neglected year after year in the homilies preached on this passage throughout the world. (My wife was treated to a homily on dogs and on some empty platitude from a recently deceased man’s obituary. Many others were even more lucky, having sat through homilies consisting in nothing other than Bishop’s Appeal marketing pleas). But I could offer that same lamentation just about any Sunday, considering the deplorable state of the Church today as regards the approach so many of her clergy take to our Sacred Tradition: I offer it today because of the special importance of this parable.

The Old Covenant — as Origen says, represented in this parable by the priest and the Levite — failed to restore this poor man to health. But at last the Samaritan came, the first time, and did what was necessary so that this man could have his health restored. That, of course, is precisely what Our Lord has done in the Redemption — giving this man medicine (Sacraments) and putting him into the inn (the Church).

But this parable beautifully illustrates that Redemption itself points to its own completion occurring at some point in the future, in the inn. Yes, Our Lord’s coming will bear its full fruit, within the Church He founded and within the History He created. There is no reason to suppose that the Samaritan’s return “on his way back” refers allegorically merely to the end of time; a time when the man in the inn simply grows more and more sick during his time at the inn until, at long last, the Samaritan comes to put  him out of his misery by euthanizing him! No; far from it. The Samaritan’s return will be a time of great rejoicing, when he comes to find the victim he saved restored to his health.

And I would like to go further than Origen: the Samaritan’s willingness to pay more money to the innkeeper upon his return speaks volumes. For this additional payment refers, no doubt, to the torrents of grace that Our Lord has been pouring out this last century and the infinitely greater amount He is about to pour out upon the whole world in the years ahead.

Let us, brethren, be on the right side of this outpouring of Grace that, right now, very few are ready for — and let us bring more souls onto the right side while we still can.

Live in the Divine Will and Proclaim the Divine Will. 

I am working on some more initiatives to do my small part of this task — I will announce them on this blog at some point within the next few months; you will receive an email if you are a subscriber (top right corner of this website)

The parable itself:

Sorry to pester you all with an administrative post, but there’s a few important items related to my new book that I wanted to announce. First, I recently discovered that I can order bulk copies of the paperback for others at a discount. If you are associated with a bookstore, gift shop, apostolate, parish, Divine Will cenacle, or for whatever other reason would like at least 30 copies of the paperback, then please get in touch with me. (You can email me at the address listed on the right hand side of this web page– to reduce spam, I avoid typing it out). For orders of fewer than 30 copies I’d ask that you just use the ordinary method of ordering via the Amazon page. Also:

• The eBook is now listed as free on Amazon! Thanks to all of those who clicked the “tell us about a lower price” link as I requested on my last post. If you don’t already have it, I encourage you to obtain the Kindle version now that it is free here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P9M3R63 
• I’ve already found typos in the book. (Please forgive me — this is a self-published book, and I cannot exactly afford to hire an editor!) I have been updating it (and likely will continue to do so) to fix these errors as I find them; since the paperback is printed “on demand,” I am capable of updating as needed, and it is not hard to do so for the eBook. However, rest assured that no substantial changes are being made. If you ordered the paperback right away, you are still reading essentially the same thing that one will be reading who orders it even now; you’ll just have a few extra typos to enjoy in your copy, is all. If you have the eBook on kindle, however, please “refresh” your library so that you receive the updated version, and if you’ve downloaded the PDF, you may wish to download the updated copy (I will be sure to always keep the most updated copy at www.CrownOfSanctity.com as well as linked on the sidebar of this website)
• Don’t hesitate to email the PDF file to anyone you like. I, as both the author and publisher, am most definitely permitting (and encouraging!) this, so you are more than free to do so. I would like for the file itself to get in the hands of as many people as possible. In these days of increasing censorship and persecution of the truth (especially in places like my state of New York under the tyrannical leadership of Governor Cuomo), you never know when the works of those who speak the truth publicly will be shut down. They can shut down my blog, they can take my book down on Amazon; but they can’t delete the PDF file off of people’s computers! This is also why I encourage emailing out to your friends not only a link to CrownOfSanctity.com, but also the file itself as an attachment (just click the link to your right to download the PDF file).
  • My desire here has nothing to do with self-promotion (nor, of course, does it have anything to do with a desire for profit — I am not making a penny off of this); I merely want the knowledge of the Divine Will in the hands of as many people as possible. The simple fact of the matter is that the proximity of the Coming of the Kingdom is proportional to the extent to which these knowledges are spread. And the severity of the impending Chastisements will be inversely proportional to the same (that is to say; the more these knowledges are spread, the more the Chastisements will be mitigated — even though they cannot be fully averted).  
• This being the holy season of Lent, I want to especially encouraging reading the section on the Hours of the Passion; that is, chapter 24 (pages 304-322)