A Divine Lent #18: Raise your head up now, you have spent time enough lost in your thoughts

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

Now in Canto 12 of Purgatory, Dante and Virgil have left the prideful souls behind.  The impact on Dante is clear.

I stood up straight to walk the way man should,

but, though my body was erect, my thoughts

were bowed and shrunken to humility.

Dante is lost in thought three times in this canto.  Each time Virgil has to point out something new to him, to get him to move on.  Virgil tells Dante to leave Oderisi behind, to examine the lessons carved into the stone on which there were walking, and finally to look up to see an approaching angel.  Left to his own devices, Dante would remain lost in thought.  Virgil calls him to move, to see, and finally to receive.  While being lost in thought can be clarifying and therapeutic, it can also cause inaction, blindness, and missed opportunity.

The lessons on pride continue for Dante as he examines thirteen exquisite carvings on the stone pathway beneath their feet.

The dead seemed dead, the living seemed alive;

no witness to the scene itself saw better

thank I who trod upon it, head bent low.

To fully experience the reality of these lessons showing the fall of the proud, Dante must assume a posture of humility.  Lessons of pride can only affect change if in myself if I see them as self-convicting rather than as a indictment on others.  Humility requires the acceptance of my own pride.

Virgil instructs Dante,

...Raise your head up now,

you have spent time enough lost in your own thoughts.

Look over there, and see.  The angel comes!

The time has come for Dante to receive forgiveness, to receive a blessing, to have the weight of pride removed.  By accepting the reality of forgiveness, self-reflection can be replaced by movement.  Dante and Virgil hear the song Beati puperes spiritu, blessed are the poor in spirit.  While "poor" often means some type of deficiency, this beatitudes reflects humility gained.

This Lent may we all gain poorness in spirit to here the words of the angel,

Come, now, the steps are very close;

henceforth, the climbing will be easier.