In her introduction to Dante's Paradise, Barbara Reynolds begins by noting, "It has been said [by C.S. Lewis] that the joys of Heaven would be for most of us, in our present condition, an acquired taste."¹ And how can it be otherwise?

Just as those who grow up eating tuna from a can will balk when served seared ahi and those who only listen to top-40 music will find Beethoven's opera "Fidelio" a challenge, so too those of us who know nothing but this sin-battered world of sin, death, and decay should expect to be put out — and possibly put off — as we contemplate the perfect, eternal, and holy.

We may welcome the ahi, Beethoven, and Heaven with enthusiasm believing that it is just for such joys that we were created, but that won't make them any less of an acquired taste, something beyond our current experience.

Dante, having in the first two books of the Divine Comedy traveled into the bowels of Hell and up Mount Purgatory, has been cleansed of his sin. Only then, his repentance and faith complete, is he prepared to journey on into Heaven. And Dante ascends from the Earth to the first circle of Heaven, the Circle of the Moon.

The moon was the first circle around earth in the universe of the 13th century. Earth, at the center, had ringing it the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the stars, and the Crystalline Heaven. Finally, beyond them all and beyond time and space, was the Empyrean which is the home of God and his redeemed sons and daughters.

There are those who see the transition from this Earth-centered model of the universe to a sun-centered solar system in a vast universe as the beginning of the end for Christian thought. After all, they argue, humans can no longer think of themselves as center of the universe, the apex of God's creation, or anything special.

But such thinking misunderstands man's place in Medieval Christian thought.

In Dante, human beings are not at the center of the universe; Satan is. At the center of Earth, Dante finds the devil immobile in the frozen river Cocytus.² Surely Medieval Christians did not believe that living at the center of the universe was a great honor.

Rather than position, the issue was freedom. Satan, as dangerous as he is, is the least free of all beings. Frozen in ice at the center of the Earth, he is permitted no movement and movement is critical to freedom.

By contrast, the moon is free within its orbit and Jupiter, having a larger orbit, has greater freedom. God, beyond the orbits of the planets and stars, has the greatest freedom. The glory of Heaven is, in part, a partaking in God's freedom. The higher heavens, closer to God and therefore more influenced by God's love, move faster than lower heavens. They are freer. Earth and Hell at the center move hardly at all.

And because Heaven partakes of God's freedom, it is marked by joy, courtesy, and service.

In the circle of the moon, for example, Dante questions Piccarda dei Donati. She is assigned to this lower circle because on Earth she took vows to God that she failed to fulfill. On meeting Dante she thrills with the opportunity to serve him and "replied at once with dancing eyes" to his questions about God and his will.

Dante asks:

But tell me, you whose happiness is here,
Have you no hankering to go up higher,
To win more insight or a love more dear?³

Dante is like me. This is good, he admits to Piccarda, but don't you want better? Wouldn't you rather be higher up with greater honor? "Because I certainly would" is the unspoken background to the question. The desire for bigger, faster, and more was a way of life in Dante's day as well as ours.

That, however, is not the way of life in Heaven. Piccarda answers Dante:

"Brother, our love has laid our wills to rest
Making us long only for what is ours
And by no other thirst to be possessed.

If we could wish to bide in loftier bowers,
Our wish would jangle with that will of His
Which hath assigned our proper place and powers"⁴

Coveting, pride of place, competitiveness, and greed have no place in Heaven. Instead, says Piccarda, "'tis the essence of our blissful fate/To dwell in the divine will's radius.... His will is our peace."⁵ As a friend used to say, God's will is not a prison to constrain us, but a pillow on which to rest our heads. Reflecting on this, Dante concludes "how Heav'n is everywhere Paradise."⁶

As Dante ascends towards God, he encounters lovers, theologians, teachers, warriors, rulers, and contemplatives. They happily serve him by answering his questions about Heaven, the mystery of predestination, and the nature of perfect justice. They also make editorial comments about the corruption of the papacy and the wickedness of Florence, Dante's home city from which he has been exiled.

In the eighth heaven, the Heaven of the Stars, Dante faces questions. The apostles Peter, James, and John examine him regarding three theological virtues: faith, hope, and love.

When St. Peter asks him the content of his faith, Dante's answer is perfectly correct, yet comes as a surprise to most modern Christian ears.

One God, eternal, sole, my creed doth know
Mover of Heavens, being Himself unmoved;
Loving, desiring Him, around they go....

The three persons next I quote
As tenet of my faith; so One and Trine
That are and is their nature both denote.⁷

The core of the Christian faith is the Trinity. God is one Being and He is three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Why is this the core? Because only if God is Trinity is it appropriate to confess with St. John, "God is love."⁸ He is Trinity and so he experiences the infinite delight of giving and receiving perfect love in himself. Father, Son, and Spirit love and fulfill each other needing nothing else. If God were not Trinity, he would either be distant, aloof, and solitary or he'd be needy, requiring someone to love. Instead he is complete in himself. And the infinite love and joy of Father, Son, and Spirit overflow into Paradise — and into the Church through the salvation we have in Christ.

After affirming his faith in the Trinity, St. James asks Dante about his hope.

"Hope," I began, "is certainty of bliss
To come, which God by grace to us concedes
And for our previous merit promises."⁹

Asked about the source of his hope, Dante replies,

... "The scriptures, new and ancient, show
The sign — and this the promise points to me —
That God his friendship will on some bestow."¹⁰

My hope, confesses Dante, is "bliss to come," that is, eternal life with God by grace. And the source of that hope is the promises of Scripture without which we have only wishful thinking masquerading as hope.

Finally, St. John asks Dante about love. When John wants to know what besides reason draws Dante close to God, he replies:

"The being of the world and my own state,
The death He died that I might live the more
The hope in which I, by faith, participate

The living truth which I conveyed before
Have dredged me from the sea of wrongful love,
And of the right have set me on the shore."¹¹

Affirming faith in the Holy Trinity, filled with hope of eternal life as promised in the Scriptures, and dredged from "the sea of wrongful love" Christ's death, Dante crosses the Crystalline Heaven and passes out of space and time into the Empyrean.

There Dante sees the Celestial Rose, a sort of stadium where all the saints (including those he has seen in the lower circles) see and worship God. The seating order is not based on merit, but "Grace given is the sight which grades them so."¹²

Just as Virgil, Dante's guide through Hell and Purgatory, can no longer lead him into Heaven, Beatrice his guide through Heaven passes him on to St. Bernard, a contemplative. Bernard explains the Rose to Dante and prays (to Mary, alas for the Protestant reader) that Dante might see God. Dante looks upward.

And so my mind, bedazzled and amazed,
Stood fixed in wonder, motionless, intent,
And still my wonder kindled as I gazed.

That light doth so transform a man's whole bent
That never to another sight or thought
Would he surrender, with his own consent;

For everything the will has ever sought
Is gathered there, and there is every quest
Made perfect, which apart from it falls short.¹³

Is Dante's vision of Paradise what Heaven is really like? Yes and no. No, because he is attempting to describe the indescribable, things far beyond our human experience and the limits of thought and emotion encumbered by sin.

Yes, because Dante captures the joy, courtesy, and attitude of service that characterize holiness. He also expresses the grandeur and majesty that grow as we approach God the Great King.

Dante's Paradise reminds me of the words of the writer to the Hebrews:

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.¹⁴

Some version of Dante's unfamiliar terrain is our future as Christians and we do well to contemplate the nature of Heaven for in that vision we will find our hearts set free just as Dante's was. We too will find that,

... as a wheel moves smoothly, free of jars,
My will and my desire were turned by love,

The love that moves the sun and the other stars.¹⁵

* * *

NOTES

1. Barbara Reynolds, "Introduction" to Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy III: Paradise, trans. Dorothy L. Sayers and Barbara Reynolds (Penguin Books: 1962, 2004), page17.
2. See Hell XXXIV.28-60
3. Paradise III.64-66
4. Paradise III.67-75
5. Paradise III.79-80, 85
6. Paradise III.88
7. Paradise XXIV.130-132, 139-141
8. 1 John 4:16
9. Paradise XXV.67-69
10. Paradise XXV.88-90
11. Paradise XXVI.58-63
12. Paradise XXXII.73
13. Paradise XXXII.97-105
14. Hebrews 12:22-24
15. Paradise XXXIII.143-145