Dante's Paradiso, his greatest masterpiece, usually goes unread and yet it is his most profound, beautiful and exciting vision. Contemplating Paradise may seem to many a futile activity, since we know so little of its real nature. It may also seem irrelevant since the recovery program emphasizes the “one day at a time” approach to our lives. Such a projection into the unknown future could seem a distracting preoccupation, doomed to failure and frustration. Yet Jesus in His proclamation of God’s Kingdom often invited us to contemplate a wonderful future, a joyful wedding feast where all our desires will be fulfilled beyond our hopes. The promises Jesus made, I think, should be contemplated as best we can.

Dante makes the bold claim of having had a brief glimpse and foretaste of that heavenly kingdom. Fully aware of his sinfulness and unworthiness, he nonetheless makes the claim. In his letter to his patron, Can Grande della Scala, to whom he dedicates his Paradiso, he cites Scripture that God, to convert sinners, sometimes grants them extraordinary visions. So let us give Dante’s vision our serious attention even if some Dante scholars would not classify Dante as an authentic mystic. Dante’s creative imagination certainly plays the major part in the composition of Paradiso, but he claims that heaven too had a hand in it. Let’s take him at his word.

The first canto of the Paradiso is a retrospective summary of Dante’s experience. In it he repeatedly confesses that he has no adequate words to describe his transcendent vision of God and paradise which was granted him by God’s grace. He invents many words such as “Transhumanized” to describe what happened to him. As he soars with Beatrice above the planet earth into the higher spheres, he is amazed at his effortless ascent. Beatrice explains that since he has lost the weight of sin he is now propelled by that natural instinct (eros) towards his natural place, his real home. Beatrice tells him that God actually is the archer and Dante the arrow directed by God to his happy target. God’s desire (eros) for His creatures has placed within human hearts the desire to be united with God:

All created things move to different ports across the vast ocean of being, each endowed with its own instinct as its guide.

This is what carries fire upward. This is the moving force in mortal hearts. This is what binds the earth and makes it one.

We soar to that predestined place, propelled there by the power of that bow which always shoots straight to that happy mark.
(Paradiso I:109-126)

Dante’s Paradise then is our natural place, our final and real home where we will be completely happy, at peace and harmony with God and others, with ourselves and the whole universe. All our desires and restlessness will be satisfied; all our incompleteness perfected; all our emptiness filled to capacity. We will become truly ourselves at last. Dante describes heaven not as a boring rest but rather as a joyful activity: endless movement, surprises, dancing and singing everywhere. He meets people he knew on earth and many others whom he had always wanted to meet such as his great-great grandfather, his intellectual mentors, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure, and countless others, both famous and infamous.

Heaven is community as it should be: all the blessed souls are engaged in ecstatic enjoyment of God and of one another. Incredibly beautiful scenes unfold before Dante’s eyes: dazzling lights, brilliant colors, flowering gardens. The ever-increasing beauty is always accompanied with sublime music.

Was Dante merely a gifted master of “escapism”? Dante, the supreme poet and ardent believer, is really trying to portray “inscapism” - entrance into our natural place where we will finally be at home in the “real reality.” God has prepared it out of love to make His creatures happy and God’s power, Dante firmly believed, will make it happen.

The blessed souls whom Dante encounters give us a faint hint at the joy and peace of Paradise. The first one, Piccarda Donati, was Dante’s relative by marriage. She had been unfaithful to her religious vows on earth. At first he does not recognize her: so different is her new translucent beauty. He compares her to “a pearl upon a milk-white brow.” She seems to glow with “the first fire of love,” as she smilingly reveals to Dante her complete joy: “In His will is our peace; it is the sea into which all things are drawn by Him who created all the works of nature.” (Paradiso 3: 85-87)

Later, on the planet Venus he meets a notorious “child of Venus,” Cunizza da Romano. She had been married four times and after numerous illicit love affairs had become famous for her compassion to the poor. Lust became charity. Her words are memorable:

“I shine here for I was overcome by Venus’ light. But gladly I forgive in myself what caused my fate. It grieves me not at all - which might seem strange indeed to earthly minds.”
(Paradiso 9: 34-36)

The bright jewel shining next to her is another person notorious for amorous escapades, the poet Folquet of Marseilles, who became a Cistercian monk and finally bishop of Toulouse. He too tells Dante that remorse for past sins has been transformed into glad gratitude to God:
“But we do not repent; we smile instead - not at the sin which does not come to mind - but at the Power that orders and provides.

From here we gaze upon that art which works with such effective love. We see the Good by which the world below returns above.
(Paradiso 9:103-108)

These passages can have a particular relevance to those in recovery. The memory of our past, which often returns and causes remorse, will be completely healed and transformed by God, “The Power Who orders and provides.” Dante also calls God “The Art which works with such effective love.” What a marvelous concept of God: the Artist, the Lover, the Power which will make all things well for us.

Dante occasionally invites us readers to contemplate with him God’s presence in the wonders of the universe. As he enters the sun he exclaims:

Look upon His Son with all that Love which each of them breathes forth externally, that uncreated, ineffable first One has fashioned all that moves in mind and space in such sublime proportions that no one can see it and not feel His presence there.

Look up now, reader, with me to the spheres, and there begin to revel in the work of that great Artist who so loves His art, His gaze is fixed on it perpetually.
(Paradiso 10:1-12)

This majestic passage describes the universe as the art of the great artist who loves it forever. God’s loving gaze is focused on it perpetually, in the same way that the Father’s loving gaze is eternally focused on His Son. And their mutual love is the Holy Spirit! Remarkable is how Dante connects God’s creative and providential love for the universe with the Father’s eternal love for the Son which is the Spirit. The Trinity’s “inner” dynamism of love is also the cause of the “outer” activity of Creation and Providence. External love within the Trinity overflows and embraces all of us - one and same love!

In the sun, Dante and Beatrice find themselves surrounded by a circle of souls famous for their wisdom on earth. They appear as splendid lights and precious jewels who dance and sing as they lovingly welcome two more into their company. Their love for God is kindled even more and grows as they find more individuals to love. Among the blessed souls are St. Thomas Aquinas and one of his intellectual “enemies”, Siger of Brabant, a brilliant philosopher at the University of Paris, some of whose teachings were condemned as heretical. Conflicts and divisions on earth are now forgotten and absorbed into a communal love song and dance “whose sweetness and harmony are unknown on earth and whose joy becomes one with eternity.”

Dante compares their dance and song to God’s bride on earth, the Church, when she answers the morning bells to rise from bed and “woo with matins song her Bridegroom’s love.” Some critics consider this passage the most “spiritually erotic” of all the one hundred cantos of the Comedy. It is the ending of Canto 10, verses 139-148.

Dante then notices a second circle of souls that are dancing and singing around Beatrice and himself. He compares the two circles to concentric rainbows and garlands of roses engaged in “sublime festivity and loving jubilee.” Such graphic descriptions reveal how Dante’s poetic skill enables us to visualize something of the beauty and joy of Paradise.

Other still more spectacular scenes will dazzle our senses as Dante and Beatrice soar into higher spheres toward the “Empyrean”, the place where God as Light and Love will receive them into communion. In the sixth and last article we shall join Dante in that ultimate experience: entrance into the Trinity where he will find all his desires and longings fulfilled.