A Divine Lent #12: Your people merely shoot off words about it!


A daily reflection during Lent on Dante's The Divine Comedy.

Canto 6 of Purgatory is a bit depressing.  There are few inspiring moments here.  Dante is still surrounded by the large group of souls from Canto 5.  He notices their crowd mentality, all trying to keep up with him to make their requests for intercession.  He likens them to the new friends the winner of a dice game suddenly finds.  Everyone loves a winner.  Dante though is no better.  He responds to this crowd by appeasement just so he can get away from them.

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.

Dante promised all that he would pass along their requests for intercessory prayers to their family and friends, and "thus quicken their way to bliss."  Dante has become the always-ready-to-please politician surrounded by constituents seeking favor.

In the next scene, Dante and Virgil approach a lone figure, Sordello.  Sordello was self-absorbed and ignored their request for directions.  Instead he wanted to know where they were from.  Sordello suddenly embraces Virgil when he learns of their common hometown, Mantua.

How quick the noble soul was to respond
to the mere sound of his sweet city's name,
by welcoming his fellow citizen...

It is surprising (or telling given how low we are on the mountain) that the solitary Sordello needs a nationalistic bond in order to have any interest in these newcomers.  Dante the narrator begins an 80-line lamentation for the political and moral woes of Italy, a "whorehouse of shame."  Things start to sound quite contemporary.

For all the towns ... are filled
with tyrants: any dolt who plays the role
of partisan can pass for a Marcellus.

Anyone for a celebrity politician?  The similarities continue:

Some men have justice in their hearts; they think
before they shoot their judgments from the bow-
your people merely shoot off words about it!

Yes, Dante just predicted Twitter in the hands of shoot-first politicians.

In the midst of the begging throng, the dismissive then nationalistic Sordello, and political turmoil, Dante asks a profound question: Can prayer actually "bend the laws of Heaven" or are their hopes in vain? Virgil, somehow now an authority on prayer, answers that if the prayers are based upon "ardent love," then no, they are not in vain.

Let my prayers this Lent be based on ardent love for others, not nationalism, a desire for favors, or fear, and may we all have faith that these prayers do make a difference.

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