The Harried Mystic

I have embarked on a personal reading project during this Season of the Covid -19 Pandemic: revisit the Franciscan and Franciscan-inspired classics.

One can tackle such a project in a number of ways, but I’ve chosen to do so alphabetically by the authors last name. So, I began today with Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy Getting reacquainted with this narrative poem was a treat and an inspiration for our times.

The poem is structured in three parts: the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. The opening stanza of Inferno, Canto 1 reads:

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

This famous opening stanza captures the essence of what so many are feeling across our Nation, Europe, Asia and South Asia about the dark uncertainty that hangs over us. As the world pursues a vaccine , we must wait.

While we wait, we have one enduring force to bring to these anxious days: Love.

Among the final stanzas of the Comedy (Paradiso, Canto XXXIII), Dante writes:

Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy:
But now was turning my desire and will,
Even as a wheel that equally is moved,

The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.

Peace.

© The Harried Mystic, 2020 and Br. Anton, TSSF. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.