On Purgation in the Pandemic (Dante)

Last updated on: April 29, 2020 at 1:29 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

On Purgation in the Pandemic (Dante) 2020-04-29T13:29:39-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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If “these are the times that try men’s souls,” then we are blessed. To see this we must understand purgation and we have no better guide in this life than Dante.*

When souls arrive in purgatory in Dante’s divine comedy, they are full of joy, because hope does not have to be abandoned and redemption is possible. However hard is the purgation or great the needed repentance, there is time and so the soul will inevitably, surely, see the face of God. The man or woman who consents, even for a moment, this side of death to Divine Love sincerely can see God and so find endless bliss.

That is the promise of Scripture and Dante pictures this perfectly. He has put Satan and the devils in their place. They are pathetic figures in Dante. Satan is frozen by his own own self-pity, trapped and impotent. The devils are comic figures or engaging in just punitive actions against prelates, popes, and politicians. Many infernal regions contain no devils at all. One area of Hell, where Virgil dwells, even has a sweetness where a man might linger if he did not know bliss was before him. The high Middle Ages were not haunted by devils, but by divine love.

Divine Love, Dante thought, demanded that we be allowed to reject the good God if we wished. However, that rejection, that hell, is not a third of Dante’s master work if the prelude is counted. His focus in on redemption and the endless delights that result if a person chooses God, even at the last moment. This cosmic image of Divine Love constantly seeking to the very end to redeem, restore, and rejoice endlessly is the religion that built Notre Dame, a hymn in glass and stone to Our Lady who prays always for us to her only Divine Son.

A pandemic strips us, at least many of us, of things we value: work, friends, family. We have been thrown on our own resources and those as wise as Socrates quickly grasp that knowing ourselves, being trapped with self, is no bargain. That is the very nature of hell . . . to have lost the eternal dialectic of the Trinity with His creation for a false view of self. This timely pandemic is a chance at a purgation of our false idols. The government cannot save us. External religiosity cannot save us. Reason can save us, if reason follows the argument to the Divine Argument, the Logos of God. Jesus came in the flesh to allow us to see God and in seeing God we have hope.

We can abandon hope in everything the infernal thinks is important: worldly power, broken loves, and devils. Instead, we can look to eternal love that knows our true beauty. God has created all of us to be good, true, and beautiful and He waits to divinize us. He wishes us to become as much like He is as is humanly possible. If God still purges, then there is hope and with hope the promise fo the good of the intellect.

We can see the celestial rose and so be transformed. We lose our false self to gain our true self and so find ourselves in the divine image that God placed in every one of us.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

I am thankful for the Keystone Discussion at the College at Saint Constantine for the chance to form this devotional.

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