A Divine Lent #9: If you knew everything, no need for Mary to have borne a son


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

The recurrent theme of the third canto of Purgatory is guidance, or rather the lack thereof.  Dante begins with expressing his dependence on Virgil's guidance.

And where could I have run without his help?
Who else but he could take me up the mount?

But Dante was quickly seized by fear when, not seeing Virgil's shadow, Dante assumed he had been abandoned by his guide.  The two, though, find themselves inadequate for locating the path up the mountain.  Virgil looks inward to himself and Dante to the mountain, but neither finds a way.  This scene is reminiscent (now) of Raphael's painting, The School of Athens with Plato pointing up and Aristotle point outward.  In the this instance, neither method can accomplish the task.  Further guidance is needed.

They encounter a group of souls who are forced to wander around the base of the mountain for thirty times their life on earth due to their excommunication from the church.  The group is described as sheep without a shepherd, aimlessly going forward or back based on whoever happens to be in the lead.  They too are in need of guidance, "resigned to huddle quiet in ignorance."

In the midst of this unguided canto, Virgil exclaims:

...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.

Virgil, now bound to a land where he must live without hope, proclaims the inadequacy of Reason, punching a hole in Raphael's painting two-hundred years before it existed.  Translator Mark Musa explains "quia" as something for which we can only see the effect.  They "why" and "how" are beyond our faculties.  The great storyteller Virgil harkens back to the parable when humans thought they knew everything in Babel.  This embrace of mysticism gives nod to Dante's contemporaries Maimonides and Meister Eckhart who were speaking of the inadequacies of human language and thought to fully comprehend the Eternal.  Virgil ends by sounding more like the Apostle Paul than himself; why the folly of the incarnation if we were not in need of divine revelation?

I want to be self-reliant.  There are times when I want to be able to figure it all out.  Augustine's definition of theology as faith seeking understanding implies that such comprehension is possible.  But I am reminded by the voice of God asking Job, "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?"  Only by accepting mystery, accepting that I have limits, that I am not a god, can I remind myself of my dependence on God, on the incarnation.  Independence, i.e., over-inflated self-importance, fights this recognition of our need for the divine.

May we all recognize our dependence on God this Lent.  Mary had a baby.

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