“God … may be found only on the other side of the total self-searching experience of a zealous life. There are no shortcuts to that totally encompassing experience. Salvation must grow out of understanding, total understanding can follow only from total experience, and experience must be won by the laborious discipline of shaping one’s absolute attention.”
– John Ciardi, “How to Read Dante”, The Paradiso
What does it mean to be virtuous in a hyper-political age?
In our tribal cultural landscape, anyone can conveniently abdicate their own moral responsibility by saying things like, “My political party promotes policies that assist the homeless. Therefore I am a good person because I, by virtue of cause and effect, am assisting the homeless.” Or alternatively, “My political party pursues harsher punishments for violent criminals. Therefore I am a good person because I, by virtue of cause and effect, am advocating for a more just and equitable society.”
This argument falls flat for various reasons, but I believe that the best approach to this issue is to talk about why we, as perfectly reasonable people, say such horribly unreasonable things in the first place.
As members of an individualist society, we love taking ownership of everything except our own virtue. When confronted with our responsibility for our own conduct, we love to blend into a disciplined rank of political soldiers, and instead of hiding in the bushes like our ancient parents, we wave our banner higher and faster in a hilarious attempt to distract God from our nakedness.
To pivot from this harmful pattern, the soul must find ways of divorcing itself from its mundane associations in order to cultivate a personal aspiration towards the ways of God. Fortunately, the modern Christian has no need to draw together a roadmap for this journey by himself – the saints of the past have left the path to personal virtue well-worn in the form of their writings.
In my opinion, the most perfect example of a dramatic pivot from the political to the heavenly in the broader Western canon (apart from Scripture, of course) can be found in the life and work of the Italian poet and statesman Dante Alighieri. His expulsion from his home city of Florence in the early 14th century sparked the creation of what many would consider to be the greatest epic poem of all time: the Divine Comedy.
Although the Comedy is consistently embedded with political critiques, the text primarily examines the condition of the self. Dante’s choice of perspective is conclusive proof – the narrator and central character is a fictionalized version of the poet himself. In writing the Comedy, Dante is in effect publishing a detailed evaluation of his own soul, which brings two key implications to the reader. Firstly, the poet’s conscious choice to focus on the self instead of the political unit asserts that the former issue is more consequential for the journey towards virtue. Secondly, the poet’s rigorous evaluation of himself proves to be incredibly useful for our own personal introspection; we have stumbled upon the questions before we take the exam, in a manner of speaking. But, as any college student will tell you, the questions that are given before the exam are usually the hardest to answer.
The poet’s division of the Comedy into three parts typifies the three types of questions that are presented to Dante throughout the narrative. Although Paradiso is equal in importance and length to the other volumes of the Comedy, our focus is on a recognition of personal guilt and a journey to personal sanctification, which I believe is better reflected in the earlier two books, Inferno and Purgatorio. Besides, my intention is to inspire intense discomfort in order to encourage change, and as Dante would say, there is no better way to do that than to toss you, dear reader, into Hell itself.
In Inferno, the poet intends to correct our tendency to ascribe a greater value to politics than is appropriate. After Dante continues to fall into this error himself, his wake-up call comes in the form of a conversation with a fellow Florentine named Ciacco in the Third Circle of Hell. Dante inquires after the fate of several departed politicians, expecting Ciacco to give him a reassurance that these great men who were “bent on doing good” are in Heaven. Ciacco instead directs Dante towards the abyss, saying: “They lie below with blacker souls… if you keep going you may see them all.” In my opinion, this short conversation encapsulates the point of Inferno – to show the observer the dark reality of the whitewashed tombs that we construct for ourselves. The purpose of a temporary excursion into Hell is to force the soul into a state of humility by overturning its expectations. Job and Dante experience a similar catharsis: they both suddenly become aware that their human minds are incapable of fully comprehending the majesty of God’s work. This perspective shift is the same one described in the Gospel of St. Matthew when our Lord says that we must “become like little children” in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Little children are able to understand the “bigness” of God better than anyone else. We grown people make fools of ourselves when we bring a false assumption to the throne of Christ – we need to become more comfortable with releasing the security that comes with knowledge in favor of humility. We should be more willing to say, “I don’t know,” and thus isolate ourselves, than to gamble our soul on assumptions in order to feel comfortable among company in this life.
If the Comedy ended here, the reader could be forgiven for taking an attitude of indifference in light of the challenges presented in Inferno. This is why climbing up Mount Purgatory is so important: instead of being drawn deeper and deeper into the infernal vision, the observer is now faced with a particular call to action. Dante isn’t suggesting that we reject everything that we know to be true. Instead, he wants to place our idea of virtue into a personal and eternal context. The lesson that Inferno gives us is one of scope and not one of epistemology; our humility does not necessarily come from God’s opposition to our political pursuits here on Earth, but from being confronted with the incredible vastness of God’s truth. It is under the weight of this revelation that we realize that we are very truly alone – in the shadow of Mount Purgatory, we are finally able to understand that hiding behind the collective does not fool God into believing we are righteous people.
However, there is great hope in being alone before the Almighty: our God tends to show Himself to those who endeavor to climb up a mountain alone. The lives of Abraham, Moses, and Elijah all testify to this. If we stop seeking security in towers of Babel and instead climb God’s holy mountain to seek an audience with our Father, we will find the journey easier because we know that God will indeed meet us there. From our high vantage point, we can see all the kingdoms of the earth and understand that, although Satan tempts us with them, our inheritance is secure in the Kingdom of Heaven. However, there is one all-important exception to God’s mercy towards those who climb His holy mountain – an exception that is responsible for our very ability to pursue Godly virtue in the first place. For the Man who climbed that mountain, His well-earned audience with His Father was replaced with loneliness in its purest form. By giving us His easy yoke and light burden, He was driven under the weight of the world. Christ was crucified in order to pave the way up the mountain, and He is alive to greet us as we complete our journey. What greater motivation could there be than the love of a Savior such as this? So, dear reader, you and I should be eager to imitate Dante, Moses, and Christ most of all in our task of climbing towards good. Remember to stay humble in light of the incredible scale of God’s truth. Remember that you do not belong to this world, but remember above all to keep your eyes on Jesus and His kingdom. If He is not at the top of the mountain, you’ve picked the wrong one.
