Lent with Dante

Midway along the journey of our life

I woke to find myself in a dark wood,

for I had wandered off from the straight path.

I first read this opening sentence of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri when I was 19 with the first book in the Comedy, Inferno, an assignment in my Western Civ class.  The work was characterized by my professor as the 13th Century Synthesis, an encapsulation of the political and theological worldview of the day.  We read it (or the Cliff Notes) to understand the dynamics of Florentine politics, the intrigue surrounding the papacy, and the medieval man's view of the universe.  

I reread all three books in the Comedy a few years ago and was shocked.  How much different do those first lines seem now that I am past "midway along the journey of our life."  With a retrospective lens  not possessed by a college student, I am now able include myself within the Pilgrim's journey to review the injustice, hypocrisy, and satire in society; I can look back on my own wanderings amidst dark woods.  I can echo the opening canto's lines:

How I entered there I cannot truly say,

I had become so sleepy at the moment

when I first strayed, leaving the path of truth...

Purgatory, the second book of the Comedy, is my favorite of the three.  The Pilgrim sees the consequences of earthly actions and attitudes not only in his society but also within himself.  You feel the lightening of his load with the removal of each "P" from his forehead as he ascends to the next level.  You feel his realization for his own shortcomings.  You confess with the Pilgrim that the "things with their false joys, offered me by the world, led me astray."

The thought occurred to me that this journey would be a meaningful one during Lent, taking the journey with the Pilgrim as an examination of my own choices and character, pulling the experience from its 13th century setting into the 21st century.  Dante's 33 cantos actually fit quite well into the 33 week days in Lent.  Below are the my choices among several wonderful lines within each canto to give you a feel for the progress of the Pilgrim.  Should you ever choose to join the journey, then maybe it will bring you as it did me to yearn to drink the waters of Lethe and Eunoë, "eager to rise, now ready for the stars."


Canto 1: "We made our way along that lonely plain like men who seek the right path they have lost, counting each step a loss till it is found."

Canto 2: "You seem to think that we are souls familiar with this place, but we, like all of you, are pilgrims here..."

 Canto 3: "...madness it is to hope that human minds can ever understand the Infinite that comprehends Three Persons in One Being. Be satisfied with quia unexplained, O human race! If you knew everything, no need for Mary to have borne a son."

Canto 4: "This Mount is not like others: at the start it is most difficult to climb, but then, the more one climbs the easier it becomes; and when the slope feels gentle to the point that climbing up would be as effortless as floating down a river in a boat--well then, you have arrived at the road's end, and there you can expect, at last, to rest. I say no more, and what I said is true."

Canto 5: "Be like a solid tower whose brave height remains unmoved by all the winds that blow; the man who lets his thoughts be turned aside by one thing or another, will lose sight of his true goal, his mind sapped of its strength."

Canto 6: I was that man caught in a begging throng, turning my face toward one and then the next, buying my way out with my promises.

Canto 7: "Not what I did, but what I did not do cost me the sight of that high Sun you seek whose meaning was revealed to me too late."

Canto 8: "Oh," I replied, "I left the realm of grief this morning; I am still in my first life, but hope to gain the other by this road."

Canto 9: This harmony of sounds made me recall just how it seems in church when we attend to people singing as the organ plays: sometimes the words are heard, and sometimes lost.

Canto 10: ...do you not understand that we are worms, each born to form the angelic butterfly...? Why do your souls' pretensions rise so high, since you are but defective insects still, worms as yet imperfectly evolved?

Canto 11: "Oh, empty glory of all human power! How soon the green fades from the topmost bough, unless the following season shows no growth!...Your earthly fame is but a gust of wind that blows about, shifting this way and that, and as it changes quarter, changes name."

Canto 12: O race of men, born to fly heavenward, how can a breath of wind make you fall back?

Canto 13: "My brother, all of us are citizens of one true city. You mean is there a soul who was a pilgrim once in Italy?"

Canto 14: The heavens wheeling round you call to you, revealing their eternal beauties--yet, you keep you eyes fixed on the ground alone, ...

Canto 15: "Because you make things of this world your goal, which are diminished as each shares in them, envy pumps hard the bellow for your sighs. But if your love were for the lofty sphere, your cravings would aspire for the heights, and fear of loss would not oppress your heart; ... Since you insist on limiting your mind to thoughts of worldly things alone, from the true light you reap only the dark."

Canto 16: "The world, brother, is blind, and obviously the world is where you're from!...if the world today has gone astray, the cause lies in yourselves and only there!"

Canto 17: "All of you, vaguely, apprehend and crave a good with which your heart may be at rest; and so, each of you strives to reach that goal."

Canto 18: And he said to me: "I can explain to you as much as reason sees; for the rest, wait for Beatrice--it is the work of faith."

Canto 19: "Just as our eyes, attached to worldly goods, would never leave the earth to look above, so Justice, here, has forced them to the ground. Since Avarice quenched all our love of good, ..so here the force of Justice holds us fast."

Canto 20: Never before, unless my memory errs, had my blind ignorance stirred up in me so violent a desire for the truth as I felt now, racking my brain to know. I dared not slow our pace with questioning, and I could see no explanation there. I walked along, timid, deep in my thoughts.

Canto 21: But the power of a man's will is often powerless: laughter and tears follow so close upon the passions that provoke them that the more sincere the man, the less they obey his will.

Canto 22: "You were the lonely traveler in the dark who holds his lamp behind him, shedding light not for himself but to make others wise;"

Canto 23: "... I came up here climbing and ever circling round this mount which straightens in you what the world has bent."

Canto 24 (for the dieters): "Blessed are those in whom grace shines so copiously that love of food does not arouse excessive appetite..."

Canto 25: "In such a place as this," my leader said, "be sure to keep your eyes straight on the course, for one could slip here easily and fall."...And I saw spirits walking in the flames; I watched them, but I also watched my steps, caught between fear and curiosity.

Canto 26: "They judge by reputation, not by truth, their minds made up before they know the rules of reason and the principles of art."

Canto 27: "...you've reached the place where my discernment now has reached its end. ...Expect no longer words or signs from me.  Now is your will upright, wholesome and free, and not to heed its pleasure would be wrong: I crown and miter you lord of yourself!"

Canto 28: The water here on this side flows with power to erase sin's memory; and on that side the memory of good deeds is restored;...the sweet taste of its waters has no peer.

Canto 29: ...when we had gone a little farther on, the lady stopped and, turning to me, said: "My brother, look and listen." Suddenly, a burst of incandescence cut the air, with one quick flash it lit up all the woods--at first I thought it was a lightening flash. But lightening goes as quickly as it comes; what I saw stayed , its radiance increased. "What can this be?" I thought, and as I did, a gentle melody was drifting through the luminous atmosphere.

Canto 30: "So, you at last have deigned to climb the mount? You learned at last that here lies human bliss?...through the bounty of God's grace ... was this man so endowed, potentially in early youth--had he allowed his gifts to bloom, he would have reaped abundantly. But the more vigorous and rich the soil, the wilder and the weedier it grows when left untilled, its bad seeds flourishing."

Canto 31: "And what appealed to you, what did you find so promising in all those other things that made you feel obliged to spend your time in courting them?"...Weeping, I said: "Those things with their false joys, offered me by the world, led me astray when I no longer saw your countenance."

Canto 32: ...I would try to show you how I fell asleep. But let whoever can paint sleep, paint sleep! So, I shall tell you only how I woke: a splendor rent the veil of sleep, a voice was calling me: "What are you doing? Rise!"

 Canto 33: From those holiest of waters I returned to her reborn, a tree renewed, in bloom with newborn foliage, immaculate, eager to rise, now ready for the stars.