In a chapter entitled "Envoi":

"It is a short distance, geographically, from Rocca Secca, where Thomas Aquinas was born, to Fossanova, where he died, but it took Thomas a lifetime to get from one point to the other. Today the traveler can climb a higher hill above the present town of Rocca Secca and, standing among the ruins of the castle, look out over the valley Thomas would have seen as a child when, allegedly, he first asked, "What is God?" The same traveler can be shown, at Fossanova, in the former Cistercian monastery, a room on the second floor where Thomas died, convinced that all he had written of God was as straw. That conviction was the product of a mystical experience, and the traveler, unblessed by that, can only muse at the vast distance -- philosophically, theologically, spiritually -- Thomas travelled from childhood to the age of forty-nine when he died. What he had written then started on a journey which has not ended yet.

There will doubtless always be many of those whom 'Time' has called Peeping Thomists, thinkers, who derive much of what they hold from the study of Thomas but who are either not believers or, if believers, not Catholics. Nonetheless, it is the believer and particularly the Catholic who will feel most drawn to Thomas. For them, the traditional precept will seem less a command than an invitation or opportunity. Ite ad Thomas. Go to Thomas." ( )