A Divine Lent #35: Have you no wish to see what comes behind?

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

Canto 29 of Purgatory is all pomp and circumstance.  All the stops are pulled out for Dante and his companions.  He is is walking upstream parallel to Matelda each on their respective banks when she beckons his attention.

"My brother, look and listen."

The rest of the canto is the arrival of a magnificent procession:  seven radiant candlesticks, twenty-four elders, four six-winged creatures, a chariot led by a griffin with three ladies to the right and four to the left, with seven men following.  Each member of the procession is described in terms of superlatives.  Translator Mark Musa provides the representation of each member:  the seven candlesticks are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit; the twenty-four elders are the books of the Old Testament; the four creatures symbolize the four gospels; the chariot is the church and the griffin, the dual nature of Christ; the three ladies are the three theological virtues; the four ladies are the four cardinal virtues; and the seven men represent the writers of the New Testament epistles and Revelation.  The procession ends with a thunderclap when the chariot arrives directly across the stream from Dante.

It seems like overkill.  Is all this really necessary?  I used to have the same reaction to high liturgical practices--too much show, to little substance.  But Dante the author makes the point that the show is the substance once the show is understood.  Dante is hoping to see Beatrice.  Beatrice, though, as the ideal, representing pure love, needs to be approached within the overall context of faith.  Without that, his pursuit is merely romantic.  Divine love needs to be known through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, within the context of God's revelation to the world as told in the Old and New Testaments, with full knowledge of good and evil, and within the context of the church which is led by Christ.  A simple appearance of Beatrice would have disregarded this context and would have diminished the total experience.

On the flip, it's not all about the symbols.  As John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus, so do the symbols prepare the way for Dante and for me.  It is easy, though, to be mesmerized by a symbol, such as watching a skilled acolyte swing an incense-filled thurible 360 degrees while processing.  That's cool, but it is only preparatory.  Caught up with radiant candlesticks, Dante needs to be chided by Matelda.

The lady cried: "Why are you so intent

on looking only those living lights?

Have you no wish to see what comes behind?"

The symbols direct our vision, but should not absorb it.  The real show is yet to come.

This, Lent, may I look for the meaning behind the symbols to better understand Easter's context, and may those symbols direct my vision onward to the Risen Christ.