A Divine Lent #14: Light that makes visible can also blind


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

My eyes could see with ease their golden hair,
but could not bear the radiance of their faces:
light that makes visible can also blind.

The above verses are Dante's description of two angels that descend to guard the valley in Canto 8 of Purgatory.  The passage brings to mind the Apostle Paul's blinding experience on the road to Damascus in Acts.  Revelation can be shocking, even to the point of blindness.  Indeed the revelation is so bold as to make the faces of the angels unreachable to Dante.  Soon after this the tables are turned as Dante observes,

...I saw a shade
peering at me, trying to know my face.

Faces determine how well we connect.  In business situations, I focus on maintaining eye-contact to communicate transparency and commitment.  In more personal situations, with each other, face-to-face contact can be more vulnerable, telling, or maybe just not wanted.  Seeking to know God's face requires the uncomfortable recognition that God knows my face, both the good and the bad.

The angels' appearance is part of an unfolding drama in this valley of souls waiting to officially enter purgatory.  The souls sang Salve Regina expressing their tears and then move to Te lucis ante, a hymn sung daily in the evening asking for God's protection during the night.  A more Midwestern experience would be the twilight strains of the old Lutheran hymn Now the Day Is Over.  The angels appear as an answer to that hymn, followed by the entrance of a serpent which the angels in turn drive away.

While these events are all new and marvelous to the pilgrim, they seem to be routine to the souls in waiting, a perhaps daily occurrence.  Twilight is still bright enough for Dante to witness the drama, but translator Mark Musa observes how the events seem to be expected and unnoticed by the souls.  Though their singing is heart-felt, the resulting events become commonplace.

A different blindness can occur when something become too expected, too regular.  I become numb to it.  Even when anchored in meaningful practices such as the hymns or weekly worship, I can be unaware of the personal impact.  In this nightly drama, the entrance of the serpent could represent the daily appearance of self-interest in my life.  The entrance of the angels could be the daily incarnation of God's grace to provide meaning and sustenance in this life, to chase off everyday's self-serving tendencies.

This Lent, may the light illumine both the continual presence of God's grace in our lives and our self-interests, both the good and the bad, so that we may seek to know God's face as God knows ours.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Flour Water Salt Yeast

Image
Four simple ingredients can entice all four senses when properly handled.   Michael Pollan's 2016 Netflix mini-series Cooked got me interested in making traditional, rustic bread, specifically Episode 3: Air.  Ken Forkish' 2012 book with the same title as this blog entry taught me how.  The method is straight-forward and requires one other crucial ingredient:  time.  Forkish presents two-loaf recipes which I half to keep my carb intake and waistline under some semblance of control.  I'll walk you through the creation of this loaf of Overnight 40% Whole Wheat Bread. The process starts with flour, a 60/40 split of all-purpose and whole wheat.  Forkish is big on baking with a scale rather than cups due to the variations across brands of flour.  Digital scales that measure in grams are cheap.  Get one.  Another fun thing about this method is that the main utensil used is your hand for all mixing.  Wash them. The water comes n...
Read more

The Illusion of Indispensability

I was talking with a colleague last week who stated that I don't miss a thing.  I responded that in reality I do; I just make sure that I don't appear to miss anything.  The comment made me recall an article from early in my career whose title stuck with me: Creating the Illusion of Indispensability by John Roush.  The article appeared in a long lost (?) journal Business Horizons in their September-October 1984 edition. I was a 24 year-old Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey.  As a young, energetic Systems Engineer I would comb through a monthly circulated list of recently published articles, checking off the ones I wanted to read, looking for the secret of success.  This one caught my eye. Roush, then Executive Assistant to the President of the University of Richmond, stated the dichotomy of our professional life, "All of us want to believe that we are important, really important....Juxtaposed against o...
Read more

Hoping no one has to ask the question "Will they like me?"

Delivered Sunday, February 25, 2018, at First Presbyterian Church, Urbana, Illinois Twenty years ago, we were good consumers.  Having just moved to town, Shari and I with three small girls in tow spent almost a full year church shopping.  We visited many churches across multiple denominations critiquing each.  Did we like the sermon? What did we think of the pastor? Did we like the music? How was the church school? What did we think of the people?  Eventually, despite our well-honed consumerism, the “did we like?” questions turned into “how could we see ourselves serving?” questions.  In the end, we were called into this community. Throughout that entire process, one question never came to mind.  I never asked myself, “Will they like me?”  It literally never occurred to me.  You could say it was ego, or maybe it just comes with being part of the dominant socio-economic group.  It just never occurred to me.  It’s a church!  Of c...
Read more