You’ve probably noticed that Gospel readings begin, “In illo tempore… in that time.” Well… what time is that?
It is helpful to interrogate texts with classic questions from ancient rhetoric: “Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando?” You can probably recognize what I am about without me telling you. Aristotle formulated them, Cicero rendered them in hexameter (quoted above), St. Thomas Aquinas adopted them (STh Ia IIae, q. 7, a. 3 co.), even the Fourth Lateran…