Bishop Barron on Dante and the Spiritual Journey

well this year marks the seven hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of the great poet Dante Pope Francis has said a couple times now that the Catholics and others should read Dante during this anniversary year Dante is one of the greatest literary figures in the Western tradition it was TS Eliot who said the world is divided between Dante and Shakespeare and there is no third he's a vet level for me personally I think of Bob Dylan's great song tangle up in blue which contains a reference to Dante she opened up a book of poems and handed it to me written by an Italian poet from the 13th century because Dylan discovered Dante at one point his life and made a big difference I first discovered him in 1990 I remember vividly I was in Germany in Freiburg and breisgau studying German we went all day one of the intensive courses and at night I brought with me the little paperback edition of the Divine Comedy and I read it and it was like reading a novel probably because I was studying German all day but it's no exaggeration to say it changed my life every book I've written I think has a reference to Dante some pretty extensive many many talks and sermons that I've given have Dante references so for a lot of people over the centuries he's been a massively important figure his great poem the Divine Comedy I'd recommend I read the mark a Moosa edition it's published by penguin and and very good notes and I found the translation pretty easy to read some are you know from past ages and they're they're difficult to read even in English so I'd recommend that one there's some newer ones as well so when you read the Divine Comedy here I think some of the key themes it begins in the year 1300 Dante born in 1265 so he's 35 which by medieval reckoning a biblical reckoning was midlife you know the Bible says we last 70 years or 80 for those who are strong so Dante is at midlife in the opening line that probably most Italians know by heart midway on the journey of our life I awoke to find myself alone and lost in a dark wood being wandered from the straight path it's far more beautiful in Italian notice midway in the journey of our life so right away it's not just Dante story it's everyone's story it's about a spiritual awakening and many spiritual masters and psychologists will tell us that it's often at midlife we talk about the midlife crisis right but often at midlife that something gives away and you have to wander through the desert for a while until you find the new orientation for your life people talk about first half of wife second half of life well a lot of that sin Dante he's going to go through a spiritual crisis and and then come to an awakening well while he's lost there in the wood who comes to him but Virgil the great Roman poet Virgil a lot like Dante an Italian epic poet etc and virtual function as his spiritual master as his spiritual guide and will take him a long way on his journey very important theme in this Virgil life is you need a guide you know because things get complicated fast and it's not an easy journey the spiritual journey so you know Teresa of Avila said if there's no one directing you on your retreat the devil is directing you there's a lot of truth to that so Dante gets his spiritual master his mr. GaN and what dad what Virgil says to him basically is I got good news and bad news that the good news is there's a way out of this crisis the bad news is we have to go to hell so there's a great spiritual principle and a lot of people have recognized it in different forms is the only way up is down you have to go all the way down to investigate your own spiritual dysfunctions you can't try to run around them and that's true the beginning of the Divine Comedy Dante tries to run up the slope that's lit by the Sun and he's blocked by three beasts who recognized his represent his own dysfunction so he's got to go through hell to see clearly what's off in his spiritual life so Virgil leads him now through the levels of hell and Helen Dante is constructed like a great cone an inverted cone that comes down down down and gets narrower or narrower it also gets colder and colder as you go down both symbols of course of having turned from God makes your life more more constrained I've used that phrase from agustin to be in sin is to be in karate Oh sensei is to be caved in around yourself so you get narrower and narrower and things get colder and colder I'll come back to that but Dante is forced to look at the sufferings of the Damned now that's not just some kind of you know voyeurism of oh look how they're suffering it's to see his own dysfunction is to see look I've committed all those sins you know all the way down and that's what it looks like those are the consequences of these bad moves at certain points Dante moves into a kind of a just faints way and Virgil kicks him and makes him wake up and look it's a journey of vision if to see what's the matter look at the 12-step programs that talk about a searching moral inventory you know you have to turn your life over to a higher power then you have to do a searching moral inventory of your whole life don't leave out anything go all the way down that's what Dante has to do when he gets to the bottom of Hell of course you see Satan and Satan is a fallen angel so he's a great impressive figure and he has wings but now they become bat wings and as they is a beat the air over the ice they make the world around them colder how like sin that is isn't it that when your own dysfunction is on display it it freezes people around you it isolates them more to it he has three phases because every Center is trying pathetically to imitate God so we think we're God I'm the center of the universe so the three phases of Satan are that in each mouth he chews a sinner Cassius Brutus and Judas the three great traitors interestingly and Dante lust is not the most serious and it's the least is at the top of hell just as lust will be at the top of purgatory the most serious sin is the most kind of spiritually refined not so much when the body overwhelms the soul that happens you know that everybody but when the soul turned in on itself in an icy self-regard does something like betrayal so in a very conscious a very intellectually alert way Brutus and Cassius betray a Caesar and Judas betrays Jesus so those are the most serious ends for Dante but they come up and they see him they see him they see the source of all suffering and all evil and that's that's so important in your own spiritual journey is that you go all the way down to find the the source of everything that's off-kilter in your soul you look at it as they come up to Satan Satan does nothing's he's self-absorbed sin is just sad by the way from all six eyes he weeps dante tells us we had not a cool figure like Milton Satan or like Al Pacino in that movie The Devil's Advocate he's not like that he's just sad pathetic weeping so they hop on his side and they walked make their way down the side of Satan but then Dante imagines the world is round which is interesting for a 13th century figure when they get to the haunches of Satan suddenly they're moving up because they've come to the other side of the world now they're going to go up there's the principle the only way up is down you got to go all the way down all the way through your dysfunction up they come into the Mount of purgatory which is a seven story mountain hence Thomas mertens autobiography you've got to walk every level of it now you've seen your sin indispensable now you got to walk to purify your life now of the seven deadly sins pride Envy anger avarice sloth gluttony and lust and those are the seven levels of purgatory and so Dante climbs and he sees the the work of those in purgatory and the work is what they call an anti ed Romeo which means or augur a contra for Ignatius it means to act against to act against what you were doing so the prideful who elevated themselves are pressed down by great boulders the envious who looked out at the world around and resented their eyelids are sewn shut like like a hunting bird you know the slothful have to run like people in a gym the lustful have to go through fire because they have to be purified so Dante does all that he watches and he actually joins the prideful because he realizes that's my son I'm proud and so he joins them and Terry's a great Boulder around once purified and so you can't skip that level it's not like oh I've seen all my dysfunction I've gone through hell fine fine but now you got work to do you got work of purification to do purgatory once he's at the top of Mount purgatory he's ready to fly so Dante now is joined Virgil gives way he's joined by baya to DJ the woman he loved when he was a young man who had died quite young and she's now his spiritual guide and she leads him on a flight through the various levels of heaven anyone give us so much she could say about this but I'll just say one thing notice how light heaven is hell is heavy and it's cold heaven is is light as Chesterton said you know how come the angels can fly because they take themselves so lightly but that's what it's all about is when you turn away from your own ego now you can fly as they fly through heaven I'll just say one episode they meet Thomas Aquinas and st. Bonaventure so Thomas the Dominican Bonaventure the Franciscan but in a great act of heavenly courtesy it's Thomas the Dominican who tells the great story of Francis the founder of Bonaventure's order and it's the great Franciscan Bonaventure it tells the story of Dominic and I've always loved it because it's sort of courtesy on earth or in hell we're ads you know I gotta Surt myself over and against you and I won't glorify you because you're not going to glorify me we're in heaven it's just the opposite it's hey let me tell you about about Francis let me oh I'll tell you about Dominic so I love that it's a great image of what life should be like they come finally to the vision of God and some of the most lyrical beautiful verse in Dante by this point by the way st. Bernhard's taken over Bernhard as the mystical theologian so he's now succeeded by a to DJ as his guide and the very end they look into into the face of God and what does Dante see there but but love see heaven is love that's what it is and so the face of God is the face of pure love or as he says in them in the wonderful closing line of this epic poem I saw the love that moves the planets the other stars so that's what it's about is journeying to union with God which is always a journey toward toward love so I agree with Pope Francis here very strongly it would be great for everyone to read The Divine Comedy or parts of it get a good commentary on it plow through it if you can there are sections that are you know they're very medieval it's about medieval Florence and so on but get the general move of it and I think you'll find yourself very uplifted on the seven hundred fiftieth anniversary of Dante's birth

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

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Length: 11min 50sec (710 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2016