I thought I’d made more progress than four cantos. These are dense, in a good way. Before I go hunting for my notes, some ad-hoc reflections.
I am struck by how the progress of a soul is a solitary affair. No one asks “who helped you” or “who hurt you”. You sink or swim entirely on your own merit. What did you do? What did you fail to do?
Also how the progress is solitary. Souls move forward only when they know they are ready. You and I know this is possible, yet how counterintuitive. We want our justice with a timeline so we may keep the flame of sin alive in our hearts until the time has passed. True Divine Love must wait until that fire has gone out in us, and the only thing that burns in our hearts is love. Envy has been more confronting to me than pride, and probably with good reason as it is higher up the slope. Those who rejoice at the misfortune of others AND who sorrow at the good fortune of others are punished with blindness. The eyes sewn shut, the bruise-like coloration of the setting (for their bruised egos at another’s fortune).
My notes will probably help me clear my mind.
Canto X: Here pride is paid for. Nor would I have been / among these souls, had I not turned to God / while I still had in me the power to sin.
Sin described as a power is confronting. And turning to God while we have this ‘power’ is what God wants. The ability to do evil and the choosing against it. How can anyone who understands this contemplate the problem of evil?
Though loosed from flesh in old age, will you have/ in, say, a thousand years, more reputation / than if you went from child’s play to the grave?
This falls a little flat given I am here reading Dante after a span of 700 years, but if not for Dante many of the names given would be lost to time and unremarked upon. There may come a time when Dante’s name is forgotten, but for most of us that time is remarkably short. What claim do we have to pride?
Canto XII: Few, all too few, come answering to this call. / O sons of man, born to ascend on high,/ how can so slight a wind-puff make you fall?
Sin is ‘so slight a wind-puff’, so bare a temptation, and yet we throw ourselves at it with enthusiasm. Remember how slight a temptation sin is on its own accord, but even less compared to the promises of Christ, and our shame increases when we sin. Not just because we have betrayed our calling (born to ascend on high) but because we did so cheaply.
[when your sin is erased] then will your feet be filled with good desire:/ not only will they feel no more fatigue/ but all their joy will be in mounting higher.
I just loved this verse. ‘all their joy will be in mounting higher’. Have you ever been down in the dumps despite a vague appreciation for the ways God has blessed you? Have you ever looked at your good fortune through a sour lens? I have, and embarrassingly often. What do I need to scourge in myself that rising to heavenly heights becomes the source of all my joy?
Canto XIII: There’s a note at the start that the Envious are chanting the Litany of the Saints. It’s a beautiful prayer unto itself, but the thought of it scourging sin, or being particularly attuned contra envy is remarkable. Calling on the saints, but also remembering their lives, is a way of cultivating an admiration for people whose lives are complete, and turning our attention from the worldly windings of those of us whose lives are not. Don’t we wish to join them in heaven?
A trio of verses I liked from Virgil, lost in the Purgatorio:
Then he looked up and stared straight at the sun;/ and then, using his right side as a pivot,/ he swung his left around; then he moved on.
“O Blessed Lamp, we face the rod ahead/ placing our faith in you: lead us the way/ that we should go in this new place,” he said.
“You are the warmth of the world, you are its light;/ if other cause do not urge otherwise,/ your rays alone should serve to lead us right.”
Helpful prayer in uncertain times.
“We are all citizens of one sublime/ and final city, brother; you mean to ask/ who lived in Italy in his pilgrim-time.”
Once again, the solitary and earth-vitiating nature of the afterlife strikes me. Who cares where any soul was from, in Heaven? God won’t ask if we were American, Italian, Chinese, Australian. God wants our hearts. We are all citizens of that final city! Remembering our life as this pilgrim-time is confronting too.
Sapia the Sienese, describing her sinful envy rejoicing at the misfortune of others: the blood of my own land was being spilled/ in battle outside Colle’s walls, and I/ prayed God do what He already willed.
That is, her prayer and God’s will were accidentally aligned, and she rejoiced as if she were blessed, and was wrong. This is the paradox of prayer, and praying for things rather than Holiness. When we pray God’s will be done, we are praying to surrender to the inexorable tide. It’s paradoxical but important.
Penance would not have reduced my debt// had not Pier Pettinaio in saintly love/ grieved for my soul and offered holy prayers/ that interceded for me there above.
Sapia only finds herself at this point in purgatory because another prayed ardently for her. This struck me: prayer works! But in a way that is much more consequential than I realized. We can ameliorate the suffering of souls in purgatory. Their suffering is hard to fathom, and their gratitude, to my mind, helps purge their souls, because it is kind of humiliating. Intercessory prayer is, in this way, a kind of selfless (and so Divine) Love. This has made me consider how sanctifying it could be for me to pray for certain people I have been stubbornly reluctant to pray for. Especially if they have wronged me, I can ease their sufferings in the afterlife (perhaps) and reconcile with them in Heaven. They must choose not to go to hell, and if they choose rightly, their suffering in Purgatory can be abbreviated. And in doing this, I purge myself of some pride and stiff-necked-ness and so help myself at the same time. Lord knows I need all the help I can get and how humiliating it would be to get to purgatory and learn they had prayed for me the way I had been unwilling to pray for them.
Love your enemies–this is the whip at the start of the second cornice of purgatory.
Canto XIV: The heavens cry to you, and all around/ your stubborn souls, wheel their eternal glory,/ and yet you keep your eyes fixed on the ground.
This mirrors an earlier note from an earlier Canto, a little admonishment from Virgil as we climb. Destined for glory, we are so fixated on the stirrings in the dirt. How embarrassing! How embarrassing to be PROUD of our knowledge of dirt-stirrings. How embarrassing to suffer envy at the dirt-stirrings of others. Stand up straight, lads, and look to Heaven–the stars number greater than dust, and come from a higher order of creation!
This is a beautiful and important work to be reading during lent. God is good.
AMDG
Times-Dispatch of Vichy Earth 