Denver Catholic

15 DENVER CATHOLIC | JANUARY 9-22, 2016 The spiritual master Pope Francis wants you to read T his year marks the 750th¤anni- versary of the birth of the great Catholic poet Dante Alighieri. Michelangelo reverenced Dante, as did Longfellow, Dorothy Sayers, and T.S. Eliot. In fact, it was Eliot who com- mented, "Dante and Shake- speare divide the world between them. There is no third." One of Bob Dylan's fi nest songs, "Tangled Up in Blue," contains a refer- ence to Dante: "She opened up a book of poems, handed it to me/ It was written by an Italian poet from the 13th¤cen- tury/ And every one of those words rang true and glowed like burning coal/ Pouring oª of every page like it was written in my soul." I fi rst read Dante's masterpiece,¤The Divine Comedy, in the summer of 1990, when I was studying German in Freiburg in Breisgau. The experience changed my life. Almost every book I've written contains some reference to the poet, and I've used him extensively in my preaching for 25 years. Just this past summer, while fi lming with my Word on Fire team in Ravenna, I had the oppor- tunity to¤visit Dante's tomb, which I found incomparably moving. There is so much to admire in¤The Divine Comedy: its architectonic structure, its lyrical language, its unfor- gettable metaphors, its cadences and rhythms (impossible to convey in trans- lations), its psychological perceptiveness, its deep humanity, etc. But I would like to focus on its extraordinary spiritual power. How wonderful that arguably the most signifi cant poem in the Western tradition is all about sin and redemption and is suª used through and through with a distinctively Catholic sensibility. The epic poem opens in the year 1300, when its protagonist was thirty-fi ve, mid-life by a Biblical reckoning: "The measure of our life is seventy years…" (Ps. 90:10). As psychologists and spir- itual teachers over the centuries have testifi ed, mid-life is often a time of crisis and breakthrough. The justly celebrated opening lines of the¤Comedy¤signal this truth:¤"Midway on the journey of our life, I woke to fi nd myself alone in a dark wood, having wandered from the straight path." Though he was a mas- sively accomplished man, renowned in both the artistic and political arenas, Dante was, by his mid-thirties, spiritu- ally lost. That he realized this—that he woke up to it, to use his metaphor—was a signal virtue and the impetus for his journey, much as "hitting bottom" and "turning one's life over to a higher power" are essential for those under- take a 12-step process. He meets the ghost of the Roman poet Virgil, who functions as his psy- chopomp, mystagogue, and spiritual director. One of the most important truths in the spiritual order is that one should never commence the journey alone: things get complicated fairly quickly, and a skilled guide is essential. Virgil tells the troubled Dante that there is a way forward but that it involves a journey through Hell. In our "I'm okay and you're okay" culture, this is a very di cult message to take in, but every authentic spiritual master acknowl- edges its indispensability. We have to confront our sin and dysfunction with complete honesty; otherwise we will get stuck. The 12-step program speaks of doing "a searching moral inventory" as a non-negotiable prerequisite to deal- ing with an addiction. So Virgil leads Dante on a thorough-going tour of the underworld. As the pilgrim takes in the suª erings of the damned, he is sometimes so over- whelmed that he faints dead away, but Virgil brings him back around, for the point is to¤see¤what sin does to the soul. In watching the pains endured by the denizens of Hell, Dante is seeing his own sin and appreciating, perhaps for the fi rst time, precisely what it has done to him. At the very bottom of Hell, Virgil and Dante confront Satan. Unlike any other depiction of the devil in the great tradition, Dante presents Satan, not as ensconced in fl ames, but as buried in ice. The more one muses on it, the more this seems an apt image of the coldness, immobility, and isolation that follow from rejecting God's love. Moreover, Dante imagines the devil as possessing three faces—a twisted imi- tation of the Trinity. Deep down, every sinner, in making himself the center of the universe, is aping God. From all six eyes, Satan weeps, signaling that, in the fi nal analysis, sin is sad. Unlike Milton's Satan or even Al Pacino's version of the prince of darkness in the fi lm¤The Dev- il's Advocate, Dante's devil has nothing glamorous or romantic about him. He is just stuck, pathetic, and sad.¤ Having gone all the way down, Dante is now ready to rise. Moving through the center of the earth, he comes out the other side (interestingly, the 13th¤century poet somehow intuited the roundness of the earth) and commences a journey up Mt. Purgatory. On each level of that seven-storey mountain (the title, by the way, of Thomas Mer- ton's autobiography), one of the deadly sins—pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust—is punished, usually through some version of¤enantiodromia, or moving in the direction opposite of one's sin. So the prideful, who elevated themselves in their earthly lives, are forced to carry huge boulders that press them to the ground; and the envious, who spent their lives looking resentfully at others, have their eyelids sown shut; and the slothful, who could muster no spiritual energy in this world, are made to run, etc.¤ Dante thereby takes in the two essential steps in the process of conversion: seeing and acting. Having then been purifi ed, Dante is ready to fl y. At the top of Mt. Pur- gatory, now accompanied by the blissful Beatrice, he commences a fl ight through the various levels of heaven. What he sees are, in essence, diª erent modalities and dimensions of love, for heaven¤is¤nothing but love. One of the most memorable examples of this is that the Franciscan St. Bonaventure introduces St. Dominic, the founder of the Dominican Order, and the Domini- can St. Thomas Aquinas introduces St. Francis, the founder of the Franciscans. Rivalries and jealousies are absent in heaven; all that remains is courtesy. Finally, at the very end of his pilgrim- age, the poet is permitted to look into the face of God, which he appreciates as "the love that moves the Sun and the other stars."¤ The itinerary through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven is not a bit of medieval fan- tasy; instead, it is a vivid description of the process by which we fi nd salvation. Hence, it is as relevant now (probably more so) than it was in the thirteenth century. Pope Francis has said that, especially in this Year of Mercy, we should¤read and reread this magnifi cent spiritual teacher. I think he's right. Bishop Robert Barron is the founder of the global ministry, Word on Fire, and Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles. He is the creator of the award winning documentary series "Catholicism." Guest Column BISHOP ROBERT BARRON starting to do knew that chose not told me. By day cocaine, and I is that substance, substance not to significant beginning of an addiction, it is stigmatize, are may their wretched, in precious to even space of space will whether behavioral situ- freedom should sup- ways those outcomes. DIVINE COMEDY. DANTE. GIOVANNI DI PAOLO, 1440S. WIKICOMMONS

• Cover