A Divine Lent #33: There may be pain here, but there is no death

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

After skirting the flames of the seventh terrace for the past two cantos, Dante, Virgil, and Statius hit a roadblock in Canto 27 of Purgatory.  They encounter a new wall of flames, a final act of purification; the only way to proceed is through the flames.  An angel states,

"Holy souls, no farther can you go

without first suffering fire.  So, enter now,

and be not deaf to what is sung beyond."

Virgil has to take three approaches to convince Dante to walk into the fire.  First, he provides assurance from harm based on past experiences and reason.

...O my dear son,

there may be pain here, but there is no death.

Remember all your memories! If I

took care of you when we rode Geryon,

shall I do less when we are nearer God?

Believe me when I say that if you spent

a thousand years within the fire's heart,

it would not singe a single hair of yours.

It's a bit like coaxing medicine down a child's throat.  "It's not going to kill you!  It may not taste good, but it's okay.  Would I want you to do something that's bad for you?"  Sometimes appealing to memories or reason is just not enough.  Like Dante, I can still stand paralyzed to proceed, fearing pain and disregarding what I know to be true.  Virgil changes his tact to just go on and try it.

and if you still cannot believe my words,

approach the fire and test it for yourself

on your own robe: just touch it with the hem.

He's not even asking Dante to stick his finger in the fire; just his garment.  There's no pain in that.  Still Dante is not moved.  There are times when moving forward can be tested risk free, but part of me does not want accept that the experience could be good.  I refuse to test even when the test is pain-free.  Finally, Virgil appeals to love, Dante's pure love for Beatrice.

...Now, don't you see, my son:

only this wall keeps you from Beatrice.

The appeal to love works.  Beatrice has been the object of Dante's devotion and the enabler of his entire journey.  She becomes his motive force, above reason and experiment.  Virgil continues to speak of Beatrice as they walk through the intense heat and emerge unharmed, ready to climb the last set of stairs.  Dante's purgation was complete.  He is ready to enter the earthly paradise at the top of the mountain of purgatory.

The wall of fire was Dante's final test in Virgil's eyes, at least with respect to anything Virgil could teach..

...you've reached the place

where my discernment now has reached its end.

I led you here with skill and intellect;

from here on, let your please be your guide:

the narrow ways, the steep, are far below.

...

Expect no longer words or signs from me,

Now is your will upright, wholesome and free,

and not to heed its pleasure would be wrong:

I crown and miter you lord of yourself!

These are Virgil's final words in the Comedy.  Dante has been dependent on his guide for the past sixty cantos.  Yet in this one canto, Dante if first coaxed as a child, and then declared fully independent.  The classic ideal of reason mastering desires is very much alive Dante's writings, as well as reason mastering fears.  But there are limits.  Virgil as master of reason can only take him so far.  It was Love that enabled Dante to take this final step.  Reason was proved right, but reason was not sufficient.

It is easy for me to pursue the classical ideal, to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge, to value reason for reason's sake.  I too need to remember that knowledge and reason while worthy pursuits, they are not the end all.  In the end, love matters; love is the bridge.  Thornton Wilder in his classic The Bridge of San Luis Rey said it best:

We ourselves shall be loved for awhile and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

This Lent, let us love one another.