A Divine Lent #16: We are worms, each born to form the angelic butterfly

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

In Canto 10 of Purgatory, Dante and Virgil proceed from the gate and ascend through a narrow and difficult passageway characterized as the needle's eye.  The reference is to Matthew 19 where Jesus states, "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."  Most of Dante's readers would have had some means to receive an education, so maybe this is his way of getting their attention.

There is no finish line with "You've Made It" signs when they emerge from the needle's eye.  It's not the encouraging scene along the route of a modern marathon.

we stopped there on the level space that stretched

lonelier than a desert path--I, tired,

and both of us uncertain of the way.

The joy of off-season vacations is the absence of a crowd.  More than once though I've found myself at the crest of a hill with no clear markings, no worn path, and no sign of direction.  It can be unsettling making me wonder if I'm even supposed to be here.

Dante, though, soon sees a sign, three lessons of the virtue of humility carved into the inner cliff.  Dante is amazed at the vividness of the divine carving of Mary, King David, and the Roman emperor Trajan.  For Mary Dante exclaims "the outlines of her image carved the words Ecce ancilla Dei."  Behold the handmaid of the Lord.  King David as the dancing Psalmist showed "himself both more and less than king." 

The carvings are now contrasted by the arrival of the proud souls doing penance at this level of purgatory.  Having held their heads high on earth, they are now forced to carry heavy stones that bend their heads and bodies down to earth.  They are being taught humility.  Dante exclaims to the reader,

O haughty Christians, ...

do you not understand that we are worms,

each born to form the angelic butterfly,

that flies defenseless to the Final Judge?

Why do your souls' pretensions rise so high,

since you are but defective insects still,

worms as yet imperfectly evolved?

On Ash Wednesday we hear the great leveling statement, "You but dust, and to dust you shall return."  It is a moment when we recognize our need for God and the triviality of our existence absent from the Creator.  The only reason to hold our head high is to look up to receive the ashes, to look up to receive grace.  The analogy to a worm is a striking statement of humility, a body that lives in the dust, barely raising its head.  Fortunately, the worm is really a caterpillar, which through grace metamorphoses into the butterfly.  In the words of the Apostle Paul, "for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ."

May we keep our pride in check this Lent and take on a spirit of humility.