A Divine Lent #32: I climb to cure my blindness

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

In Canto 26 of Purgatory, Dante, Virgil, and Statius are still teetering on the edge of the seventh terrace, the Terrace of the Lustful, trying not to get burned by the fire nor fall off the ledge as they navigate their way around the mountain.  Virgil's warning to Dante is both literal and figurative.

...we were walking at the ledge's edge

in single file--my good guide telling me

from time to time: "I warn you now, take heed!"...

Virgil is echoing a similar warning in the previous canto.  Dante the author (and hence Virgil) see the temptation to surrender to physical desire very real and ever-present.  Like the terrace of the Proud, the souls here are too numerous to count.  Dante encounters a poet Guido Guinizelli who comments,

...Should you want

to know our names, I do not know them all,

and if I did, there still would not be time.

Dante the author also sees his profession as poet linked to this level.  Guido and another to-be-introduced shade Arnout, like Dante, wrote poetry about Love.  Despite their noble profession, or as inspiration to it, Guido tells Dante,

....we did not act like human beings,

yielding instead, like animals, to lust.

Arnout characterizes his past life as full of follies.  Dante sees purification as a necessary journey to ascend to Paradise, stating "I climb to cure my blindness, for above."  Both Arnaut and Guido eventually withdraw into "the purifying flames," a foreshadowing of what Dante must eventually do.

During these exchanges, Dante witnesses the meeting and fleeing of two groups of souls.

for I saw shades on either side make haste

to kiss each other without lingering,

and each with this brief greeting satisfied.

The shades who were previously lustful now learn the satisfaction of the Apostle Paul's guidance to "Greet one another with holy kiss" in Romans.  Each Sunday I pass the peace in church, but rarely do I see it more than a friendly greeting.  I should contemplate the true impact of saying "Peace be with you."  It is a bold thing to say; it is the assurance of a promise and a commitment to make it so.  Yet it becomes rote through habit.

The Terrace of the Lustful exists due to soul's choosing physical love rather than holy love.  The other extreme is to to replace holy love with superficial greetings.  Both miss the mark.

In Lent, may we focus on the true meaning of saying to one another, "May the peace of our Lord be with you."