Purgatory: Canto 23 -- The Sixth Cornice, The Gluttons

Oddly, the powers of goodness, for only those can hold sway over us now unless we consider these ledges sufficient to continue to weigh us down, have prevented a number of you from posting your thoughts. Hopefully, the problem will not persist, for I have no trouble posting myself, and I'm using the same tools you have available to you. Is this the difference between one who is ready to move on and one who needs to spend some time on the cornice? Is God sending you a message to repent of these excesses in worldly love? Arise, my souls, prayer is better than sleep! Lift up your hearts and continue on your journey to God! Know that I, too, understand the words of the saint who spoke while yet in darkness, "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force". Persevere, and come what may, send us your prayers against judgment day!



Our present tribulations, of course, are nothing compared to the bombshell that's just been dropped on us in these medial cantos of La Vita Nuova. Our Lady has died! Beatrice has joined the choir of angels! Our poet is so put out by it that he has no words (and poetry without words is but a gasp for breath, for we see that we still have half of Dante's tome to go), and we sense that his reticence is stoically summoned after countless hours of gloom and despair, for who can write so well of love and be moved only to add, even though he has his reasons, "And even though the reader might expect me to say something now about her departure from us, it is not my intention to do so" (XXVIII, 2). What is most useful to us, though, is canto 29's explanation of the number 9 as the perfect multiple of the perfect root in its relating Beatrice to God. Thus is the form and structure of the entire Comdedy, not the least of which we're presently experiencing in the Purgatorio, revealed.

In our journey up this mountain, there is one thing that we keep noticing -- that community is being rebuilt from the ledge of the pride where each sinner carries his own burdens through the ledge of the avaricious where the whip and rein are distributed amongst the community and everyone contributes according to the impulses of his heart. Here, no less, on the ledge of the gluttons, we see men bound together in communal love, so that the promise of society is at hand, which Pope interprets as a natural instance derived from our being created as social beings in that "Great Nature spoke; observant men obeyed;/ Cities were built, societies were made." The preservation of these societies has cost the lives of many, both those who sought to ensure that kings held the keys of St. Peter and those, like St. John Ogilvie, who was martyred for the same passionate belief that exiled Dante from Florence, that the Church and the State ought to be separate entities interdependently reliant on one another for the greater good of man. Some of us, though, are so consumed by our own gnawing hunger to please ourselves that we don't look up from our plates to involve ourselves with the greater tide of humanity. We are so turned inward, that we are spiritually (and communally) wasted.

If, as Fr. Hunthausen teaches us, the nature of sin is a turning inward from God, then we see this quite clearly in the gluttons, who are starkly contrasted against those who wallow in offal on hell's third floor. Of the gluttons, then, who appear to us so wasted that the name of man ("omo") shows clearly on their countenances, we learn that they are called to circle around the tree, smelling its fruits and nectars, and yearning for it in their hunger. The faculty, then, of hunger has been opened to them, which we did not see on the lower shelves where there is obviously no need for food. The last time we saw something unslaked for thirst was Master Adam in the tenth bolgia of circle 8 if we don't count those in the previous cornice whose faces cleaved to dust. That hunger is the means for purification here is especially poignant to us in this time of Lent in which we fast for the greater purification of our souls and yield to temptation whenever we pass the Krispy Kremes shrine in our neighborhood supermarkets.

Dante meets Forese, who praises his wife (in contrast to Judge Nino's lamenting of his), for her prayers have raised him to this level in only a handful of years from the time of his death. Rather than speak of himself, however, he foreshadows for us a ledge on which we have not stepped in arguing against the immodesty of Florentine women who walk the streets with their breasts exposed (take any of our modern beaches and the same can be said for us though we men of this mount have been sufficiently accustomed to the sight that it should no longer inspire within us of the MTV generation any immoderate thoughts -- This casual link between gluttony and lust is something of which Fr. Hunthausen will speak in the activities section). Most importantly, this is the first time in a long time that anyone has taken an active interest in Dante's being a living person, which everyone notices because of the shadow he once again casts upon the ground. Why would the gluttons have an interest in the living any more than the avaricious seem not to, do you think? (And do note, if the timeline is correct and five days have passed by this point since Dante began his journey, then he hasn't eaten anything himself for almost a week. The last drink he might have had was back on the shore when Virgil washed his face in the morning dew. Moreover, he hasn't stopped to relieve himself. And before we insist that his somatic functions likely do not hamper him in this world -- he is still overcome again and again by fatigue and sleep. Just an observation as we conclude our day on this.)

S.