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to mystic institute.org. Before I begin, let me just say, I did change this afternoon. Yes,

just this afternoon, the title of the talk. As you can see here, we're going to be discussing

the commands of charity. I'm talking about charity and its role

in command, but I wanted to, following a discussion I had with some students today, talk more about

the way in which charity relates to other kinds of friendship rather than other virtues. And I may have occasion

to say something about the role of charity in relation to the virtues, but here I want to talk

about friendship. And I want to do this because my ultimate goal is to give you some way of thinking about the coherence of your life.

How does your life hang together? What makes it a whole?

Other than the fact that all of your actions, the things you do, the things that happen to you or in some

way involve you, what gives your life its logic? And what are the standards by which we can

ask about that coherence? And for Thomas Aquinas, and I think for us today, that answer has to do with

the relationship between one kind of friendship and every other friendship. Now, another way of

putting the topic of this talk is to say, I'm going to be explaining here what Thomas means

in this first passage I have before you and I'm just going to read it out loud and then we'll

have before us a general outline of the talk. So here's what Thomas says. Now since the good

upon which any other true friendship is founded is ordered as to an end,

to the good upon which charity is founded,

it follows that charity commands the act of any other friendship,

...