Attainment of Happiness – Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.
The Thomistic Institute
The Thomistic Institute
4.8 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2026
⏱️ 41 minutes
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Summary
This lecture was given on March 28th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.
For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.
About the Speakers:
Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P., is an instructor of dogmatic and moral theology at the Dominican House of Studies and the Assistant Director of the Thomistic Institute. He holds a doctorate from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He is the author of Prudence: Choose Confidently, Live Boldly and Your Eucharistic Identity: A Sacramental Guide to the Fullness of Life, and is co-author of Credo: An RCIA Program and Marian Consecration with Aquinas.
His writing also appears in Aleteia, Magnificat, and Ascension’s Catholic Classics series. In addition to the TI podcast, he regularly contributes to the podcasts Godsplaining and Pints with Aquinas, and Catholic Classics.
Keywords: Grace, Happiness, Hierarchy, Holiness, Providence, Parables, Sower, Spiritual Life, Sacraments, Trust
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Tumistic Institute podcast. |
| 0:06.0 | Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square. |
| 0:12.0 | The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Tumistic Institute chapters around the world. |
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| 0:21.6 | to mystic institute.org. So my proposal for parabolic discourse as a kind of cipher for Christian |
| 0:30.6 | life is the type of thing that you can apply in reading all of the parables, or so I would submit |
| 0:34.6 | to you, you can apply in reading all of the parables. So here are some quick, kind of rough and ready interpretations the parables, or so I would submit to you, you can apply in reading all of the parables. |
| 0:37.9 | So here are some quick, kind of rough and ready interpretations of parables according to this |
| 0:42.2 | paradigm. Things that I will not gloss beyond this opening salvo of 45 seconds in each case. |
| 0:49.7 | So the parable of the wheat and the tears, for instance, which is the second parable that |
| 0:52.7 | we have in Matthew 13 and then in parallel texts in the synoptic gospels. |
| 0:57.1 | I think that's a beautiful parable about divine providence. I'll have a couple of things to say about divine providence, apropos of the sower went out to sow. but you know in this parable the master sends out his servants they plant good seed in the field |
| 1:09.4 | and then at night it says when men sleep an enemy comes and he plants bad seed. And then the good seed, I mean the good growth crops up. And then the bad growth crops up shortly thereafter. And the servants ask the master, in effect, like what happened? I thought that you gave us good seeds so that it would beget good growth. And he says, an enemy has done this. |
| 1:44.4 | And then they ask him whether or not they should root it out. And he says, no, let them grow up together to the end of the age. And then we'll gather the good growth into barns. And then we'll gather the bad growth and burn it up. He says with unquenchable fire. The word for unquenchable in Greek is asbestos. There you go. |
| 1:48.0 | So that's, I think, a beautiful parable about Providence. I think there are times where there are things in our lives which we |
| 1:52.4 | suspect escape God's notice. You know, it's like if God actually knew the intimate details of my |
| 1:57.9 | life, who would certainly revise the script because this right here is |
| 2:01.4 | not voino. But I think that parable is a beautiful antidote to that type of thinking because |
| 2:07.2 | what we see all transpires within the bounds of the field. It all transpires within the bounds |
| 2:12.0 | of the field. And what is more, the Greek formulation isn't so much like everybody's asleep |
| 2:17.0 | or when the master didn't |
| 2:17.9 | notice. It says at the time when men sleep. Doesn't say that the master sleeps. He who watches |
... |
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