Purgatory: Canto XVI -- The Third Cornice: The Wrathful

Dante writes that "love and the gracious heart are a single thing" (VN, XX, 3), but the soul that is oppressed with vice is acting contrary to its nature even though Pope contends that vice is a monster we embrace after a time and eventually come to look upon it as true and right. Wrath and the vicious heart, then, are not a single thing, no more than a timid creature is at one with its fear, for emotions and dispositions contrary to human happiness are naturally at odds with the image of God that we are. That we were created for love, then, should be obvious; that we should practice it as a natural impulse and habit is even moreso. The reality, however, is that we are lost in our own fog, and it is only through raising our heads to the light of Christ, like St. Casimir, perhaps, though he likely spent time in the valley of flowers with King Wenceslaus for failing to fulfill his princely vocation of serving and protecting his people as assigned to him by God, that we are able to see clearly our vocation and path.



Dante takes up two great themes here -- the first is that of free will and the divine love which governs it, for without free will, humanity would not have it within itself the ability to choose to turn toward or away from God. The second is that of the separation of Church and State, which Dante has Marco explain as the reason why the earth is in such dire straits -- in seeking to combine Church and State, the shepherd of the Church (Boniface VIII) has misled the people who are used to grazing where they see their leader. To the reasoning mind, there seems to be a contradiction here -- how can people who are perpetually blind to the corruption of their leaders at the same time enjoy the blessings of a free will that would otherwise enable them to overcome that corruption? We have free will, the faculty of reason, the light of Christ, and the community of believers -- how can we go wrong? Are we trapped in Pope's dictum that we eventually become so used to our turning away from God that we cease to notice that we're doing so, or have we reasoned, like the Muslims, that there is no way to separate our sacred and our secular lives, for those who exist in God's light do so in all aspects of living? Dante is likely interpreting Christ's command to give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's as his scriptural basis for countenancing his view against that of Christ's vicar's ambitions, but it is obvious that he doesn't expect secular leadership to operate outside of the faith as is evidenced by so many Catholic kings in the valley below the Gate who are largely there because they invested too much time in temporal affairs and not enough in walking with God.

So . . . anyone want to help solve this problem? Where's the love in all of this?

S.