Dante's Guide to Navigating a Spiritual Journey
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Summary
Dante's Divine Comedy is considered one of the greatest works of literature ever written. It not only imagines the three parts of the afterlife, but serves as an allegory for the spiritual journey of the human soul. Here to take us on a tour of the journey dante describes is Robert Baron, a bishop in the Catholic Church.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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dante's divine comedy is considered one of the greatest works of literature ever written
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the poem not only imagines the three parts of the afterlife but serves as an allegory for
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the spiritual journey of the human soul here to take us on a tour of the journey dante describes
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is robert baron a bishop in the catholic church today on the show bishop baron offers a bit of
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background on the divine comedy and how it resonates as a story of the search for greater
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meaning that commonly arises in your mid-30s we then delve into dante's journey through inferno
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purgatorio and paradisio we discuss why dante can't initially climb the redemptive mountain of
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purgatory and has to go through hell first the importance of having a tough but encouraging
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guide for any spiritual journey why hell is an inverted cone that gets narrower and colder at
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the bottom and why traders inhabit the lowest layer we then get into what it takes to climb
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mount purgatory why heaven and the divine comedy doesn't get much attention and what dante finds
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when he gets there along the way bishop baron describes the meaning behind the religious imagery
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dante used in his poem as well as insights that can be applied to any spiritual journey after the
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show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash dante
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all right bishop robert baron welcome to the show thank you great to be great to be with you thanks
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so you are a catholic bishop but you're also a really busy man you've done all sorts of stuff you
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founded an organization called word on fire where you're putting out tons of content interviews with
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public figures you did a documentary on catholicism for pbs you're a religion correspondent for nbc you
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speak to corporations around the world about religion the reason i brought you on because you put out a
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course on word on fire about one of my favorite books of all time and that's dante's the divine
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comedy most of us if you lived in america or in the west you probably read excerpts of the inferno
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maybe in a high school english class i'm curious when did you discover dante's divine comedy and how
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did it change you yeah i could tell you exactly when it was it was the summer of 1990 and i was in
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germany i was doing my doctoral work over in europe and and that summer i went to germany to study german
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and so all day long i was just you know reading writing speaking and listening to german so i brought
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with me from paris where i lived i think it was just the inferno just the volume one of dante i had
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never read dante at that point i thought you know i'm just gonna i'm just gonna read this so after a
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long day of german study i remember going back to my little it was like a little crummy college dorm
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room they had me living in and i had this this small paperback of the inferno and i started reading
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it and it was to me at that point in my life i don't know why exactly but i read it like a novel
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it was just so engaging and the notes in the edition i had were so good that it just drew me
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into the the narrative and everything so i i loved it from that moment and then you're right in
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suggesting that it had a big impact on my life i think almost every book i've written has some
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reference to dante in it maybe not every talk i give but a lot of them would have a reference to
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dante he's one of those people that at the same time a great literary master obviously but
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he's a spiritual master and t.s elliott said you know western literature is basically divided between
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two people shakespeare and dante if that's true that one of the two greatest writers in the western
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tradition wrote basically about the christian spiritual life so i think that's rather extraordinary
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and i found him to be indeed one of the great masters so that's how i found him and that's that's
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kind of in general what he's meant to me yeah for me i i remember reading a bit of it
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in high school english an excerpt but then when i was around i think i was like 35 years old which is
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interesting so we'll talk about this because this has an important reference in the inferno i i read
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the whole thing and i remember just being like this is great i can't believe a medieval guy wrote this
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and i'm constantly thinking about things i'll have an experience in my life and like oh that reminds me
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of something from dante oh absolutely it's archetypal you know and once you get into that
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story you recognize yourself in it and as you suggested there it's for people going through a
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midlife crisis and all of us do to some degree dante in many ways is the man to read it's it's how to
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how to handle yourself during that time of crisis i mean what what do you do what don't you do
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what's the right spiritual program or psychological program dante illumines all that well let's talk a bit
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about dante in his life because i think it shapes you know helps us understand what he was trying to
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do with the divine comedy so uh tell us about dante when was he alive what was his life like
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yeah well he was born in 1265 so he's born kind of at the height of the high middle ages so
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when he's born thomas aquinas is writing bonaventure is writing the great cathedrals are going up
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so he's there at the height of the best of medieval culture and i would put him in that mix when people
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ask about the middle ages i'll say look at shark cathedral read the summa of aquinas and read the
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the commedia of dante and you'll see what that culture was about so he was kind of born into the
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best of that period born 1265 in florence and he's a he's a florentine in his bones you know some people
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are just identified with the city of their birth and and he was like that he gets involved he's a
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intellectual obviously he's trained in philosophy and poetry and so on but he's also a practical man
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of politics and he gets involved in the very rough and tumble politics of that time roughly speaking
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the italian city states like florence were kind of divided between pressure from the north from the
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german emperor and then from the south the pope and they were siding with one or the other and that's
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kind of where the politics broke well dante finds himself around midlife on the wrong side of one
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of these fights and without going into every detail he gets exiled from his hometown and it just broke
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his heart into a thousand pieces he was a man of florence and to be told you can never come back
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practically destroyed him and it's true he never came back he never returned home he begins to write
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the divine comedy his great masterpiece during those years of those early years of exile so it's a book
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written by an exile for people who often feel themselves in a kind of spiritual exile anyway he
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wanders those latter decades of his life around different italian cities he dies in ravenna and
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that's where he's buried there was a move to have his body brought back to florence and his people said
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no no no you rejected him in life you won't get him in death so he's still there and i i remember
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oh this is maybe 10 years ago we were filming in ravenna and we made a pilgrimage to dante's grave
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which i found very moving so he died in i believe it's 1321 or 23 one of the two so early 14th century
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he died and what's interesting of course is he's born 1265 so when he's 35 which would have been seen as
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midlife in the middle ages that's the year 1300 and that's when the divine comedy is set in addition
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to getting exiled from florence and that had that basically caused him to write the inferno or the
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divine comedy another there's another person in his life who's actually a character in the book and
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this this character named beatrice tell us about beatrice who was she well it's fascinating not his
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wife he was married to a woman named gemma and had a number of children with her but he makes almost
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no reference to his wife in his writings but when he was just a kid this kid roughly his age
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beatrice he sees her and it's typical of the middle ages in that kind of chivalric context that he he
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just was smitten he was struck by her by her beauty but also by her personality her spirit and then many
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years later he sees her again and they exchange a glance and a couple of words but that's enough
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to make him say i'm going to write the most beautiful poem ever written about you so and of
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course he did that's this amazing thing is you know i could say that you could say that but we don't have
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the the creative power to do it he did and he said i'm going to write the most beautiful poem ever
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written and that's the commedia that's the divine comedy is in a way all about her but because it's
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about her whom he loved with the deepest part of his soul it's by the same token about god and that
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tells you a lot about his mentality and the mentality of the middle ages you know that through a beautiful
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creature i can come to knowledge of the ever more beautiful creator so that's the role that beatrice
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plays in the writing of it she's also as you say a character in the poem and that's a very
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interesting role she plays there yeah this idea that romantic love can lead to love of god and that's
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a platonic idea right like that yeah talks about in the symposium right erotic love can eventually lead
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you to loving the good yeah it's called the diotima speech it's a woman around the table as socrates
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and his friends are talking about love and wisdom and so on and she makes an observation that's picked
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up by some of the greatest spirits in the west namely by beginning with the particular beautiful
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thing or person or event you can move by a steady series of steps finally to the source of all goodness
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the source of all beauty you can see this echoed in dante you also see it echoed in james joyce
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pick up a portrait of the artist as a young man his great autobiographical novel and there's a scene
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out of that book that's right out of the diotima speech and about dante so let's talk about the
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structure big picture structure of the divine comedy because the book is it's it's fantastical it's almost
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it's like a fantasy novel but it's highly organized and highly structured if you look at it the right way
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in fact it's been compared to a medieval cathedral yeah why is that i say for several reasons if you
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go to the medieval cathedrals like a charter notre dame in paris or rheims or amiens the great ones
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there's a kind of here comes everybody or here comes everything quality about them in the cathedrals
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you can find planets and plants and animals and people obviously and angels and god and the blessed
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mother and like the whole universe gargoyles etc the good the bad the ugly it's all there there's
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something of that in the divine comedy there's a line i remember from a hero of mine kenneth clark who
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is uh the great art historian that was behind that series called civilization and in the course of that
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when he says in his plummy accent is there sensuality in dante and he says of course there is there's
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everything in dante you know and it's it's a good observation that like the cathedrals there's an
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everything quality it's all there but secondly as you suggest correctly the architectonic structure of
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it is very much like a cathedral so the cathedrals were were balanced and symmetrical and ordered
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and usually around the number three you look at the three levels let's say of the facade at notre
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damme the three portals you know the three entrances etc the whole building is kind of
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predicated upon the number three and for obvious reasons because god is three persons same with the
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divine comedy three major sections the inferno the purgatorio and the paradiso but then each of those
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is subdivided into 33 cantos or divisions and then the cantos are displayed according to what is called
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terza rima or third rhyme it's a particular rhyming pattern the point there is in the architecture of
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the poem the number three is consistently ingredient and for obvious reasons because if you want to get
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out of the dark night that he's in you've got to be trinitized you've got to be brought into the life
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of the trinity so the the order and the harmony the internal integrity of the poem is very much like a
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cathedral all right so let's dig into the divine comedy and what i'd like to do sort of organize
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this i think dante we're gonna make dante our guide for our spiritual journey in life like he goes
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through a spiritual journey i think we can look to him on how what we can learn about that so the poem
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starts off with the inferno so this is this trip to hell and the opening lines we kind of alluded to
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them are this he said midway in the journey of our life that's funny he didn't say my life he said our
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life i found myself in the midst of a dark wood and the true way was lost why does dante begin his
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poem like this so important isn't it many people at midlife go through a time like that first half
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of life when you're seeking you know relationship and marriage and your kids and your career and your
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house and and you're on a certain path and you're finding great joy in that accomplishment
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something tends to happen at midlife and you know jung the psychologist who loved dante
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took 35 as the midlife number you know it's not 50 it's more like 35 what often happens is the
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things that got you going in the first half of your life the things that gave you joy and purpose
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are suddenly kind of taken away from you and you feel lost and arid and depressed and what what am i
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about what am i supposed to do so that's where the story begins midway and it's the journey of his
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life because as i say in the year 1300 he's 35 but by saying are you're right he's trying to draw
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everybody into it to say my story i do think is your story too so midway on our life's journey we tend
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to find ourselves kind of lost i bet i bet a lot of people listening to the two of us right now will
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identify with that i found in my years doing pastoral ministry is very often people at that age
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like 35 or so would come with difficulties and problems and depressions and do you remember i just
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saw it recently that old movie with billy crystal and jack palance you know the city slickers remember
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that right yeah they're out there and you know billy's going through a midlife crisis and and jack
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palance is kind of his wisdom like his virgil figure and at one point he goes how old are you
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and he said i'm 38 i think he said and he goes yeah yeah they all come at the same time and and that's
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just old spiritual wisdom that often at that age see what's what's happening is the first half of your
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life you found success and dante did you know had his family and his and his wife and his career and all
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that but then see we're not meant just for that and so it's you you have to be sort of weaned off
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of the things that obsessed you in the first half of life to to get now into a deeper place but that's
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painful invariably and that's how the story begins and he talks about how he got lost was he fell asleep
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and he's talking he says he says the true way was lost so he's insinuating that he had the true way at
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one point but he fell asleep and then he lost it i think that i mean if i look at my own life i just
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turned 40 not too long ago and part of that i read my old journals from like the the first 20 years of
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my adulthood and when i as i read those journal entries and i was 19 20 my early 20s i was struck
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by how earnest and idealistic i was like i've got these ideals i'm aiming for and then as i got older
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my journal sort of shifted to complaining about you know carping about the day-to-day of life
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and maybe that's what happened like he maybe i think all of us have those ideals but then just
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because of the day-to-day we forget what what's really important in life yeah i think that's a
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legitimate way to to get at it and maybe it was dante being so caught up in the politics of his
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hometown that he lost you know his love for philosophy and theology and all that maybe it was compromised
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by all those battles he was in and then he saw that he had the terrible pain of his exile which never
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went away and but i think he would say that opened him to a deeper desire a deeper place and and that's
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how the story commences if you miss that you're going to miss a lot of what's going on i think in
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the divine comedy it begins with a man in crisis it's like i always compare it to um the beginning
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of moby dick you know when you know you call me ishmael and you know when it's a dreary november in
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your soul that's how that story begins and he knows i've got to go on a journey he's got to go
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on this whaling ship and then the story unfolds it's similar with dante in a way that he he begins
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in crisis and he knows implicitly he's got to go on a journey all right so he's scared he's lost he
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knows he needs to go on a journey so he looks around and he sees a mountain and he's suddenly
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filled with hope and he's like i see the path i'm gonna start walking towards that mountain
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what was that mountain and why did it give him hope and then how come he couldn't climb up the
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mountain yeah it's the mountain of purgatory which he eventually will climb but it's he has a lot of
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work to do before he gets there and you know it's not a bad thing when you intuit during a time of
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crisis oh there there actually is a way out of this there is a path and at the top of it there's
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there's light and i i'm not in an impossible situation but the mistake he made at that point was to
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think he could just race up the mountain like okay no problem i'm going through a rough patch
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but just give me you know a quick little burst of energy and i'll be fine but what he needs to do
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is go on a very long and very arduous journey eventually going up that mountain that's that's
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right and coming to salvation but it's going to cost him it's not a cheap grace kind of story
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and there's what happens is there's three animals that block him and they basically they represent
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the different types of sin he will encounter when he finally goes to hell right the different
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degrees of sin and the people that read them in different ways how to interpret the animals but
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the main point is you can't climb the mountain you can't just race up the mountain you got to come
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to terms with these kind of ravenous forces that are in you that are blocking your access to truth and
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goodness and beauty there's something the matter with your own soul that you've got to deal with
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otherwise you get to the top of the mountain and you'll still be the same person so you'll be
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blocked you just might might be in a higher a physical place but you won't be higher spiritually
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until you deal with these animals and so these different levels of sin will correspond to the levels of
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hell that he has to go down you know how wonderful that even when talking about hell there's that
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medieval sense of hierarchy and order and symmetry so even hell is laid out a bit like a like a well
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ordered building yeah you make the point in your own ministry and working with counseling individuals
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that before they can make that change they might have that inkling of hope like yeah i i need to do
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something and i there's something that'll help me you say they got to go through a deep moral inventory
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yeah similar to what they you know what you might see in a 12-step program and that's what these animals
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were saying like hey no you can't do this you're gonna have to go to hell and kind of face your inner
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demons to see what's going on in you right and and i use that on purpose of course that language from
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the 12-step process now do a connection there the 12-step was recognized by jung the psychologist
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as a very powerful kind of psychological spiritual tool and it's found resonance with a lot of religious
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people because the principles of it are close to our principles i'll just give you a couple of
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examples someone's got to hit bottom right if you're addicted to sex or to drugs or to you know
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whatever it is you won't really make progress until you've hit bottom until you say okay i know i'm lost
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i know i can't solve this problem on my own right at which point you've got to hand your life over to a
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higher power well look how the divine comedy unfolds it opens with a guy kind of having hit bottom
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he knows he's lost he first tries on his own oh i can get up this mountain no problem no no no no you
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can't and then what happens is his life will be handed over to these higher spiritual powers and only
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under their direction will he now another term from the 12 step be able to do a searching moral
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inventory right so someone that's going through aa or something you have to you have to do an
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inventory not only of the things that you've done to other people ways that you're drinking or whatever
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has hurt other people but you got to go deep down inside and look at the roots and sources of
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this dysfunction well that's exactly what happens here hits bottom turns his life over to a higher power
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and then is walked through a searching moral inventory so it's very much along the lines of
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the 12 step and mind you too under the guidance of a of a mentor so in the 12 step you have a sponsor
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right you have an elder or someone that's been through the same journey and so dante has that too
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there's a tremendous resonance there yeah it's interesting dante hits bottom but then he learns
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to go up he's gonna have to just keep going down he has to go yeah go down to go up so he has to
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go to hell and you mentioned he has a guide his mentor it's virgil which is a weird pick right for
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a catholic italian guy his mentor through hell and purgatory is this pagan poet why virgil well
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several reasons one is he's a he's another self when you're first getting going in this process you need
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someone that has a kind of authority you know over you but at the same time it's better to begin with
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someone kind of like you well who is dante but an italian epic poet who is virgil an italian epic
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poet virgil represents in dante's vision human reason so precisely as a pagan he doesn't have the
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benefit of revelation so he represents like what what humanity can come up with on its own a human
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reason now this is a good catholic instinct he's writing at the same time as thomas aquinas who said
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faith and reason who used classical philosophy in his articulation of the christian faith so something
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very parallel is going on here where dante is using pagan wisdom to get him going in the spiritual
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process and i see i find that as a as a catholic it's kind of wonderful is use whatever works in a
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way if someone comes to you and they've really been struggling in the spiritual order the psychological
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order well okay start with a philosopher a psychologist start with a wisdom figure from the
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world maybe that's that's better the person can get that more easily so that's what virgil represents
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he's like dante and he's human reason and it leads him a long way virgil will lead him all the way
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down through hell and all the way up mount purgatory it's only when he's ready for heaven that virgil has
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to hand him off because human reason can't go that far but i think you know if people listening right
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now are going through a crisis you got to find a mentor you got to find a spiritual guide and maybe
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begin with someone who's kind of like you that's a lesson here and also the thing about virgil he doesn't
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uh he doesn't use kid gloves with uh dante he's constantly just berating him because dante you
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know he's going through hell he's you know naturally terrified of what he's seen and virgil's always
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like a stern he reminds me like a stern football coach yeah buck up you got to be brave man and don't
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hide your eyes you got to look at what's going on here you know and so you're you're 40s i'm a bit
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older than you are when we were going through school so i was coming of age in the catholic church right
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after vatican ii so 60s into the 70s everything was kind of soft in those days we were emphasizing
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you know the love of god the mercy of god uh forgiveness and you know get up and you'll be
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okay and but there was something weird about that because if you look at the great spiritual tradition
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from the very beginning to right through it's marked by these tough people spiritual direction is
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not like a little soft you know here's a pillow and relax on the contrary a real spiritual direction
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is tough work because it involves precisely this coming to terms with what's negative in you and you
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do need a football coach and you know i bet this is true for you it's true i think most men that i know
00:25:17.020
who are the teachers and coaches we remember that they were the ones who were tough on us right the
00:25:22.800
ones who made a lot of demands on us that they didn't say hell you're fine everything's great
00:25:27.620
the the coaches and teachers that we remember are the ones that that demanded a lot of us
00:25:32.920
that's a lost art i think i'll tell you a story from a couple years ago a priest friend of mine younger
00:25:39.160
than i am but went through some of the same kind of training he said you know what our generation missed
00:25:45.060
we missed yoda on our shoulders and the reference was in star wars remember when uh luke skywalker
00:25:51.880
has to go through his sort of initiation as a jedi and there's yoda yoda was not easy on him and was
00:26:00.780
barking orders at him and making demands and and literally riding him you know to get him to do what
00:26:07.200
he wanted this priest friend of mine said we didn't have that grown up we didn't have yoda on our
00:26:12.160
shoulders well that's virgil you need virgil to say okay we got to go through hell you're not going to
00:26:20.060
hide if you start swooning on me pal you you better wake up you know so i i think that's a much much
00:26:27.960
needed thing today we're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors
00:26:31.780
and now back to the show so transformation requires courage and it requires just being open like seeing
00:26:44.940
things as they really are and that takes courage to do that yeah let's talk about the topography of
00:26:48.780
hell so they start making their way down hell it's described as this you know an inverted cone
00:26:53.260
so it starts out wide and as you get deeper and deeper in hell it gets narrower and narrower
00:26:58.280
what does that represent he's so good i mean he's such a great poet and so all those are symbolic
00:27:04.100
values so see in in aquinas and the great medieval figures the soul is meant for expansion
00:27:12.740
you know the soul is meant for union with god and it's meant to go out from itself first to the
00:27:18.820
the beauties and goodnesses of the world but then ultimately is to to fly into the fullness of goodness
00:27:25.580
that god is so it's like wings it's flight it's mobility it's it's spaciousness so hell is the opposite of
00:27:34.740
that saint augustine described sin as being curvatus in say which means caved in on oneself it always
00:27:44.560
struck me as a really good definition those times in life when you're you're so self-absorbed and
00:27:49.980
self-preoccupied self-pitying that you want to kind of retreat into the recesses of your own self
00:27:56.900
well that's hell so as hell gets lower and lower it gets narrower and narrower so that's the the small
00:28:05.540
space of the fallen soul but dante's got to go down all the way to find the source of that narrowing
00:28:14.980
in him of course the other thing so the narrowness of hell is also the cold of hell and that's a that's
00:28:21.700
a marvelous intuition of dante's because we always associate hell with heat with fire he doesn't it's
00:28:29.420
the opposite the deeper you get the colder it gets much better symbol i think because sin is is a cold
00:28:38.660
state of affairs and i make the world around me colder when i'm in sin cold causes me to kind of
00:28:46.620
you know grasp at my own sides to warm myself up it it narrows and constricts me so it it corresponds
00:28:54.360
to the narrowing of the physical space of hell and i think to me that's always been a marvelous
00:28:59.280
symbol not fire but ice no i think i i think that's a great representation and great description because
00:29:05.600
i've known in my own life when i am in those periods where you know i'm not i'm just like i'm
00:29:10.240
self-absorbed i don't feel good and you feel cold and i think we've all can relate to that and what's
00:29:15.860
interesting too as dante's going down hell he's he's talking to the the souls in hell and what's
00:29:21.240
interesting the way the impression i got is that they all continue to be self-absorbed like they're
00:29:25.740
just still talking about you know whatever happened to them in life or they just talk about well the
00:29:30.380
reason i'm here is because because god put me here it's my parents or just because the time i was born
00:29:36.000
again it's that self-absorption is still going on there well and look at if you're dealing pastorally
00:29:41.340
with people like going through a 12-step type process that's often what you got to overcome
00:29:45.500
is maybe before someone's hit bottom they're playing all those games all the time of oh no
00:29:51.420
this is not really my problem if someone else did this to me it's because of that i have these old
00:29:56.160
resentments and and you know if only things were different then i would feel better about myself and
00:30:00.840
you have to get beyond that and everyone in hell is reflecting everybody else but in this very
00:30:07.100
negative way they're reinforcing their own constriction and coldness and negativity
00:30:13.460
um it'll be the opposite of course in heaven when everyone reflects everyone else in a positive
00:30:19.960
way you know we're in a beautiful world you and i would be enhancing each other you know as i would
00:30:26.420
appreciate your goodness you'd appreciate my goodness and we wouldn't be in a rivalry but we'd
00:30:31.620
be in a in a relationship of kind of mutual enhancement well hell is the opposite you know for this and and the
00:30:37.840
thing is you know we we all we all live in hell in the measure that we're sinners we know what that's
00:30:43.280
like when i find myself in this cold narrow space full of self-pity blaming others making the world
00:30:50.620
around me colder filling other people with resentment i mean i i know what that's like um and
00:30:56.580
dante expresses that in his in his very fine poetry what's interesting about dante too and his the way
00:31:02.540
depicted hell the bottom layer of hell like the closest to satan that's where the fraudsters go
00:31:08.640
right it's not the murderers it's not the you know people who do violence it's people who
00:31:13.540
lie and people who commit fraud who are traitors why what's going on there why did dante think that
00:31:18.700
was worse than killing somebody for very simple reason because it's more spiritually pure
00:31:24.220
so like sins of of lust and and you know when your passions get the better of you
00:31:28.880
their sins don't get me wrong dante sees them as very serious things but he also can find room in
00:31:35.000
his heart to to forgive you know when someone's passions or bodily passions get the better of them
00:31:40.960
but see when you're you've betrayed a friend well that's not just your bodily passion get the better
00:31:48.060
of you that's a very coldly calculating move that participates much more in the soul than it does in
00:31:56.140
the body if that makes sense someone who's caught in some kind of say a sexual addiction a lot of
00:32:01.220
that is the body or the the desires the body kind of run amok he's much more sympathetic with that
00:32:07.940
than he is with the cold-blooded calculating traitor and that's why i think quite rightly puts
00:32:15.260
them at a lower place in hell if you look at the deadly sins and we'll get there when we get to
00:32:19.760
purgatory but probably most people today you mentioned sin or you know vice they would think
00:32:25.340
right away of sexual sin well dante reverses that sexual sin for him is the least of the deadly sins
00:32:32.380
where of course pride is the most serious but i wonder how many people if you say boy that guy is
00:32:39.540
really a sinner that that guy really is caught in vice would they think of pride first of all i i rather
00:32:46.740
doubt it but dante is right in line by the way with the great spiritual teachers too aquinas would
00:32:52.600
certainly say that that the greatest of the sins is pride not lust so he gets down to the bottom of
00:32:58.320
hell and he sees satan and satan's this kind of pathetic figure he's this giant with wings and he's
00:33:03.320
covered he's like in ice to his chest and he's crying he's got three faces he's sort of this inverted
00:33:09.280
trinity going on he's chewing up the great traitors judas and then the guys who betrayed caesar
00:33:15.140
and you know virgil says all right we got to hop on satan here because we got to keep going on a trip
00:33:20.620
and what's funny satan doesn't do anything that's kind of that soul idea that when you're in a place
00:33:24.620
of sin it's you're just self-absorbed and you're cold and what's interesting you talk about this in
00:33:29.300
the course you know what virgil says to uh dante is like all right hold on here we got to keep going
00:33:33.800
down that's that's the only way we can get up to purgatory there's so much that's fascinating there
00:33:38.320
i think one of the great literary inventions in the whole tradition is dante's invention of satan
00:33:43.860
at the pit of hell as you say he's at the very lowest place so the coldest place and it's the
00:33:50.920
iciest place he has wings as dante imagines him because he's an angel right well angels are meant
00:33:58.620
to fly they're spiritual creatures meant to fly into the beauty of god but satan is a perverted angel so
00:34:06.360
the wings have become like bat wings and now that he's stuck it's beautiful beautiful perception here
00:34:13.120
he's stuck so as he beats his angel wings which are meant to make him fly all they do is make the
00:34:20.340
world around him colder see it's the use of of a positive spiritual power but in a sinful way
00:34:27.160
you know the um that's the christian idea of sin by the way it's not like there's no such thing as
00:34:32.360
pure corruption corruption has to be a corruption of something good by definition you know so evil is
00:34:40.220
only a privation of the good that we say so the the wings represent what's good in satan his spiritual
00:34:47.100
powers but they become corroded and corrupt and so all they succeed in doing is making the world around
00:34:53.280
you colder how many of us sinners use what's good in us our minds our wills our powers our whatever
00:35:01.360
but to harm people we what should be instruments of of love become instruments of of hostility
00:35:09.000
well that's the wings of of satan beating over the ice and making the world around him colder
00:35:14.700
and then as you say beautifully he's got three faces god is three persons and that's a way of
00:35:22.480
expressing the fact that god is love by the way right that in god there's a lover the father a beloved
00:35:27.780
the son and the love they share of the holy spirit so that's beautiful the trinity is an expression of
00:35:33.080
the love that god is what's every sinner every sinner is a sort of perverse simulacrum of god
00:35:40.840
in the measure that you're a sinner you think you're god you think you're the center of the universe
00:35:45.920
the world revolves around you the world exists to serve you and so all of us sinners have these three
00:35:53.900
faces were perverse inversions of the trinity and then as you also suggest he's chewing in each of
00:36:02.140
his mouths on a sinner in dante's mind the three greatest traitors judas who betrayed jesus and then
00:36:08.020
brutus and cassius who betrayed caesar so there's our thing too about that's the most refined kind of sin
00:36:14.440
betrayal but he chews on them without devouring them and then he weeps from all six eyes so stuck
00:36:25.140
coldly in place making the world around you colder chewing on past resentments and weeping in your
00:36:35.500
sadness that to me is such a beautiful depiction of what sin looks like what sin feels like in other
00:36:43.200
words he's not a glamorous figure the devil is often portrayed in literature as a glamorous figure
00:36:49.320
he's not in dante at all and he's effectively powerless because they they jump onto his sides
00:36:56.980
and he he barely even notices them because he's so stuck in this sort of hopeless self-regard
00:37:04.120
that's a beautiful picture of what goes wrong with us and notice he finds it at the bottom of hell which
00:37:11.960
means it's the source of all the negativity of hell so when you go in that spiritual inventory and you
00:37:19.600
go all the way down into yourself and find this wound or this pain or this sin that's generating
00:37:30.020
all that's wrong in you that's a very important spiritual moment so they make the bottom and as you
00:37:37.340
said to to go up you have to go down you have to kind of fall upwards i think richard roar talks about
00:37:42.240
that you got to fall upwards so they continue their trip like basically they're going through the earth
00:37:45.860
right yeah out to the other side of the earth and there they see mount purgatory this is where
00:37:51.960
the refinement is going to start happening so dante got to see sin what it was like now he's in the
00:37:58.020
process where you can refine himself purgatory so you get to purge yourself of right and remember he he
00:38:03.240
tried that early on oh i'll just climb this mountain but he wasn't ready at all for that and even that
00:38:08.760
move oh no problem i'll climb the mountain you see all the pride that was in him and the sort of
00:38:14.360
spiritual superficiality so what he needed was the experience of hell he had to go all the way down and
00:38:21.400
get all the soot on him and all the smell and the stink and the and the ugliness of hell he had to see
00:38:27.920
all of that that's true in any spiritual adventure if you think oh no problem i'll just you know purge
00:38:34.020
a few little problems that i have then ipso facto you're in a bad spiritual space so having made that
00:38:40.940
awful journey he's now ready for purgation so he gets to purgatory tell us about the topography of
00:38:47.840
mount purgatory what does it look like and there's also there's a daily rhythm that goes on there that
00:38:52.400
didn't happen in hell it's arranged according to seven levels and they correspond to the
00:38:57.920
seven deadly sins i don't know if any of your listeners are aware of of thomas merton the great
00:39:03.940
trappist spiritual writer from the last century his autobiography is called the seven-story mountain
00:39:09.080
and it's it's taken from dante the purgatory because merton saw his life as a trappist as a kind
00:39:15.800
of purgatorial exercise to walk up the seven-story mountain so that that's the discipline he has to go
00:39:21.780
from level to level there's a rhythm as you say of of day and night of work and then rest and so on
00:39:28.260
there's an orderliness and a purposefulness about purgatory that you don't find in hell hell is sort
00:39:34.880
of cacophonous and hopeless and and you know the way that's that's what it feels like to be stuck in
00:39:41.440
sin but when you're ready for this purgative move it corresponds to a to a discipline and order in the
00:39:48.780
spiritual life and what you see too is you see the souls in purgatory starting to help each other
00:39:53.700
right hell they were just yelling at each other and in purgatory they're actually they're starting
00:39:58.960
to come together they're starting to turn outwards yes yes and that's the right way to to do it and
00:40:04.180
and you see it anyone that's done counseling or spiritual direction you know with people is you
00:40:09.240
see that it's it's lovely when that moment happens people were caught in hell they're they're
00:40:14.460
just the way dante describes them resentful blaming others suspicious of everyone around them
00:40:21.420
looking for the worst not the best but when you make that transition and you say okay look i know
00:40:26.680
i'm a sinner i'm a terrible sinner and i'm now doing my purgative work well then your your instinct
00:40:34.320
shifts and and you start seeing other people not as rivals to you but as companions on the way and
00:40:40.180
and you know that in helping them you're helping yourself and vice versa so right that's a major
00:40:46.000
spiritual shift so i think that's a good point there so for spiritual transformation you need a
00:40:51.620
guide you need to do that deep that searching moral inventory see who you who you are and then
00:40:56.980
eventually you got to get to a point where you're trying to get better but you got to do it with other
00:41:02.000
people yeah right it's that's exactly right a communitarian enterprise the spiritual life is never
00:41:07.740
just you know me and jesus or me and god trying to work it out god wants to draw us into a family so
00:41:13.440
the church i'm speaking as a catholic the church is essential to the spiritual progress it happens
00:41:20.240
with other members of the mystical body and that's a beautiful dimension of it and mind you virgil's still
00:41:27.600
guiding him at this point so he's not handing him off yet still human reason and that's interesting
00:41:33.420
thing so there's only someone who's maybe outside the formal church but they're trying to follow this
00:41:38.000
program okay you can do a lot under the guidance of of you know human human wisdom so in purgatory
00:41:45.220
people are working together like hey you got this we can make this happen you're doing a great job
00:41:49.600
what does the purgation process look like i mean how do they get rid of their their sins
00:41:55.000
it's usually by a process that jung referred to as an anti-edromia which is kind of or
00:42:00.620
stagnation as we call the agere contra you you act against so pride you know which is the elevation
00:42:08.440
of the self the lifting up the prideful people have to walk around under the weight of terrible boulders
00:42:15.120
so their their self elevation is met by a self denigration let's see the the envious people that
00:42:23.000
kept looking around you know other people and how they doing their eyes are sewn shut the way a
00:42:29.260
a falcon's eyes would have been sewn shut in the middle ages so in every case and then the gluttonous
00:42:35.260
of course are are deprived of food the slothful have to get up and run so on every level it's the
00:42:43.420
opposite of your problem and that's a very deep spiritual intuition too though simple but very
00:42:49.320
profound it's like okay what's your problem what's your poison you got a agere contra you have to act
00:42:55.360
against whatever that is still very wise advice and as the souls go up the mountain and sort of
00:43:02.260
start taking off their sin purging themselves of their sins they get lighter that's the another
00:43:06.600
thing dante notices they're going to get they get lighter and lighter and it's that it's the opposite
00:43:10.720
from you know of hell where it's inward and heavy and cold now you're turning outward and becoming
00:43:16.980
lighter and lighter you know i think of it it's funny ever since i read that whenever i'm walking
00:43:21.140
uphill i like to walk and hike you know it's a steep uphill climb like oh it's such a pain this uphill
00:43:27.580
climb i always think yeah you know in heaven it'll be the opposite is it as i'm climbing upward it's
00:43:33.440
getting lighter it's a great image the lightness of being means i'm not weighed down by my ego i don't
00:43:40.680
have that monkey on my back anymore that's what weighs you down is you're preoccupied with how am i doing
00:43:47.560
how do i appear am i successful do they like me and all of that is just a weight on my back
00:43:54.540
the best moments in life are when you transcend that when you can set that monkey aside and then
00:44:01.660
you move with such a a lightness of step well that's the idea now is as you're getting rid of
00:44:08.260
your sins like what if you really could get through a day without pride that you never once thought
00:44:15.200
about you know do they like me am i doing better than that guy why does he have something i don't
00:44:20.420
have what if i could set all of that aside the lightness of being is what we all really want
00:44:27.180
but we're burdened by all seven of the deadly sins yeah i can really i've i've there's been
00:44:32.720
those moments in my life where i just feel that like i just completely just don't care but in not
00:44:36.760
not in a nihilistic way but in a way i just say i just i'm gonna just be focused on it and it feels
00:44:42.360
great yeah then you just have a tendency to start turning inwards again it's it's annoying
00:44:46.740
right well that's the mysterium iniquitatis is our the spiritual masters say the the mystery of evil
00:44:52.640
because as you say and we all know that everyone listening to us knows that those moments in life
00:44:57.920
when you're least aware of yourself are the best moments in life but they're like a firework that goes
00:45:04.560
off and then it disappears so he makes it up mount purgatory and then we enter into paradisio
00:45:09.640
and i'll admit when i read paradisio it didn't it didn't grab me as much as purgatorio or the
00:45:17.180
inferno but i know other people have complained about the same thing it's like well i mean people
00:45:21.900
don't talk about that when they talk about the divine comedy they usually talk about inferno
00:45:25.080
maybe purgatory right people always forget there's a paradisio why do you think heaven doesn't get a
00:45:29.480
lot of attention because we don't know what it's like and and see sin we're all over that i mean i i
00:45:36.080
know all about sin i've practiced all seven deadly sins i know what that feels like and so the imagery
00:45:42.020
that dante reaches for we're like yep yep got it remember yeah i experienced that and the purgatorio
00:45:48.280
trying to deal with all this yes i've been there so i think we we just readily identify with those
00:45:55.000
parts you get to the paradiso and now you're in a place that's beyond the deadly sins that's beyond
00:46:02.920
self-absorption you're not lost you're journeying in to the light and love that god is well see most
00:46:13.340
of us don't don't have a lot of experience that in those great moments we were just alluding to
00:46:18.760
maybe in the liturgy maybe in a splendid work of art we have little fleeting hints of what that's like
00:46:26.580
it's like a you know in the scriptures how the angels the angels come and they go they never
00:46:34.380
stick around all right there's no example in the scripture where the angels came and then they
00:46:39.460
moved in next door and they were there for you know a few months i got to know them no the angels
00:46:44.180
come and they go and that's i think a very deep spiritual point that these moments of breakthrough
00:46:49.840
are moments and they pass now my point here is when you're trying now in a sustained way
00:46:57.440
to depict heaven we have a much harder time even a even a sublime poet like dante
00:47:03.040
has a harder time grabbing our sinful imagination and also what goes on in heaven what's interesting
00:47:09.280
so there's a lot of there's a lot of movement there's a lot of music dante also describes it
00:47:14.460
soldiers sitting around playing games and singing and you describe heaven you do
00:47:19.560
useless things in heaven but uh as we learned from c.s lewis sometimes the most valuable things
00:47:24.380
in life are the useless things yeah they always are no by definition because if it's useful it's
00:47:30.320
subordinated to an end outside of itself so i've got a car it's useful to me to get me places i want
00:47:35.560
to go once i get there some some things i do are useful to higher ends but like sometimes the car takes
00:47:42.360
me let's say to the mass and now i'm doing the most useless thing i can on earth the mass is the
00:47:48.140
most useless thing you can do which means it's the best thing that it's not subordinated to an
00:47:52.640
end outside of itself or i go to a baseball game baseball game is supremely useless it's a it's a
00:47:58.460
waste of time but that means it's the very best thing we have and so i think play or game language
00:48:06.960
is appropriate to heaven that's why you know playing a harp which always sounds so dull to me i mean harp
00:48:12.280
music if they had like a cool guitar or something but like playing a harp but the idea there is both
00:48:18.200
music and it's play and both of those are evocative of the sheer useless splendor of of heaven also i
00:48:27.880
like about play is or let's say you're you're not just strumming a harp by yourself you're part of an
00:48:33.000
orchestra because now you're you're sharing music with others people that ever like been in a band you
00:48:39.020
know those ecstatic moments when the band really comes together and you know you're not just playing
00:48:46.040
the song but you've reached a new level of cooperation and and kind of one in the other
00:48:51.840
quality or you know in sports same thing like if you're bringing the ball up court and and boy that
00:48:58.060
play just worked or that fast break we we all communicated appropriately and we you know those are
00:49:05.200
the moments that are kind of like heaven and dante is hinting at all that for sure so when he gets to
00:49:11.700
heaven he looks to the side and virgil's not there anymore but it's beatrice this this love of his life
00:49:18.640
right and it's funny uh you think this would be like a great moment but beatrice kind of just yells
00:49:22.780
at him at dante's like and basically yelled like what took you so long why did i have to do this
00:49:27.360
for you to get here but why is it beatrice at heaven that that's his guide and not virgil yeah because
00:49:33.520
she stands for theology and virgil's for a natural reason it's more masculine it's more mind oriented
00:49:39.460
and you know purpose oriented theology i mean read aquinas those people is certainly a rigorous
00:49:44.920
intellectual discipline but it's predicated upon something more like love because it's a response
00:49:50.960
to revelation and revelation is always the act of a person revealing him or herself right stay with
00:49:59.760
that image for a bit i mean i could learn a little bit about you by looking you up and google and i could
00:50:05.140
read about you and i'm i'm learning i mean a little tiny bit in our conversation today but if you and i
00:50:11.460
went on to become friends and so on and then a certain point maybe deep into our our companionship
00:50:19.320
you decided to reveal something about yourself that i would never have known otherwise right well at that
00:50:27.980
moment something like love or trust has to be paramount because i i can't analyze that and just
00:50:36.200
take it in on my own terms i have to i have to love you enough and trust you enough to believe what
00:50:41.660
you've told me if that makes sense that to me is a very exact uh comparison to what faith religious
00:50:48.280
faith is like is i can know a lot about god through reason and i can you know work my way up the ladder to a
00:50:55.260
degree but finally it's a person who's spoken to me and so it's in love and trust that i have to say
00:51:04.000
okay i believe that that's why it's appropriate that i mean dante didn't love virgil i mean he admired
00:51:10.420
him and he followed him but he loved beatrice and so she's a more appropriate symbol for theology
00:51:16.380
which is what's needed for the journey into heaven so he begins his journey and what he sees like we said
00:51:22.200
there's people playing games they're singing there's music sometimes dante can't hear the music
00:51:27.220
and he's told well your ears are these mortal ears and you can't hear it but you only get remnants of
00:51:31.860
it and the other the big change too is the souls the souls in in heaven they've completed that outward
00:51:38.340
turning they're completely it's just this communitarian everyone's just reaching out towards
00:51:43.280
each other and i think i mean we've all had those moments where people we have differences with
00:51:47.860
we somehow just as you said like that baseball game where you do a great play everyone's just
00:51:52.100
syncing up and playing their part yeah and so dante describes heaven as there's individuals you don't
00:51:57.400
lose your individuality in fact your individuality gets enhanced in heaven but it's enhanced to be part
00:52:02.740
of this larger circle of community yeah and it's a circle of community that includes not just human
00:52:09.220
beings but the angels too and there's that gothic cathedral quality you know that the cathedrals have
00:52:15.080
human figures in them to be sure in natural realities like plants and animals but they also
00:52:20.940
have angels they have these beings that exist at a higher pitch of existence and who are loving and
00:52:27.700
knowing at a higher pitch and heaven shows our communion yes even with them even with the angels
00:52:34.240
how come we can't hear the angels we can say well we're you know in our sin we're just not tuned in
00:52:40.240
we're not attuned to that level of of reality so he makes it to the top layer of heaven and a new
00:52:47.600
guide takes beatrice's place and saint bernard why did saint bernard become dante's guide to the
00:52:53.100
utmost reaches of heaven because he was a mystic bernard was extraordinary figure died early 12th
00:52:58.980
century fascinating figure intellectual to be sure religious founder but what he's best known for is
00:53:05.780
his mysticism and when i say mysticism i mean that sense of union with god that has become visceral and
00:53:15.140
direct and experiential so the philosopher can know something about god based on human reason the
00:53:21.960
theologian can know at a higher level based on love and trust and revelation the mystic is someone who's
00:53:28.260
been invited to the table and is is eating the banquet a mystic is someone who's kind of beyond
00:53:34.960
philosophy beyond theology beyond language and conceptuality and has reached the highest pitch
00:53:42.240
of perception so even theology has to give way to mysticism at the end of the process and he's the
00:53:50.320
one that ushers him in to dante gets to see the face of god basically the beatific vision is that what
00:53:55.080
it's called yeah yeah it's a lovely description the visio beatifica so vision a lot of the divine
00:54:02.260
comedy is about vision coming to vision coming to see well what's the culminating point of all of human
00:54:09.920
experience would be this visio beatifica the the vision that finally makes us happy beatus just means
00:54:18.940
happy what's the happy vision it's the vision of god because god is the supreme good and all the goods
00:54:27.340
that we experience are reflections of that supreme good participations in it so at the end of all of
00:54:33.400
our striving when we let go of of our reason we let go even of theology we come to a vision
00:54:40.760
that's only a gift of god you know and that's what dante receives at the end of this long journey
00:54:47.060
well bishop barron this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about
00:54:51.000
your work well go to uh word on fire.org all one word word on fire.org and you can find lots of
00:54:58.060
sermons and books and articles and podcasts and lots of things fantastic well bishop robert barron
00:55:03.220
thanks for time it's been a pleasure god bless you thanks for having me today my guest name is bishop
00:55:07.880
robert barron he's the founder of word on fire you can find out more information about that at
00:55:11.460
word on fire.org also check out our show notes at aom.is slash dante where you find links to
00:55:16.220
resources where we delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast
00:55:28.080
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00:55:32.220
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00:56:07.160
reminding you to not listen to the aom podcast but put what you've heard into action