A Divine Lent #28: Appearances will often give rise to false assumptions


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

The newfound relationship between Virgil and Statius is center stage in Canto 22 of Purgatory.  The angel brushing off another of Dante's P's and the group's ascendance to the sixth terrace are just side comments.  The focus is on Virgil and Statius with Dante following from behind ease-dropping on their conversation.

Virgil is surprised that Statius was guilty of avarice from what he has heard about the Roman poet from others.  Statius points out Virgil's error.

Appearances will often, it is true,
give rise to false assumptions, when the truth
to be revealed is hidden from our eyes.
...
In truth, I had no part in Avarice;
in fact, too little!  The sin I purged below,
thousands of months, was Prodigality.

Virgil's own warnings in his writing caused Statius to shun greed.  He went to the other extreme instead, spending too liberally, exhausting his own personal wealth in careless fashion.  Statius explained that opposite sins, Avarice and Prodigality, are punished together in purgatory.

Statius was guilty by association in Virgil's eyes.  Among the Avarice, Virgil assumed Statius had the same attribute.  How often do I make similar false assumptions based on appearances?  Where is truth to be revealed currently hidden from my eyes?

Virgil then asks Statius how and when he came to the Christian faith?  Statius drops the bomb.

Statius said: "It was you directed me
to drink Parnassus' waters--it was you
whose radiance revealed the way to God.

You were the lonely traveller in the dark
who holds his lamp behind him, shedding light
not for himself but to make others wise;
...
Though you I was a poet, though you, a Christian."

"It was you!" "Through you ..." The unknowing pagan Virgil, icon of pre-Christian Latin culture, was the instrument to point Statius to God.  Dante the author is elevating Virgil's poetry to a spiritual level by its sheer beauty; and why not?  Once again, appearances give rise to false assumptions.  I might assume that someone or something explicitly not Christian or spiritual would not be a source of spiritual inspiration.  When I do so, the truth is hidden from my eyes, and I am foolishly limiting the domain of encounters with the Divine.

This Lent, may we all look for inspiration, look for God, in the places where we assume God is not.

Comments

  1. Karen M.March 20, 2018 at 7:18 PM

    "I might assume that someone or something explicitly not Christian or spiritual would not be a source of spiritual inspiration. When I do so, the truth is hidden from my eyes, and I am foolishly limiting the domain of encounters with the Divine." I have experienced God's grace in powerful ways through people who name themselves athiests.

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