This week, I share my third and final reflection (at least for now) on Dante’s Divine Comedy. We’ve descended into the depths of Inferno, climbed the steep sides of Purgatorio, and now ascend into Paradiso. With Dante, and Beatrice, as our guides, we seek the pearls of great price to be applied in our own lives.

Driving down 96th Street, the familiar surroundings passed unnoticed to my eyes, clouded in fear and doubt, unable to focus on anything but the impending collision of our livelihood into the rocks of an emerging financial reality. My mind spinning, I wondered aloud, “how is this possible?” already knowing the answer and it’s seventy-seven antecedents. Building a business is difficult, so very uncertain, and loss of revenue exists as a perpetually looming threat to the fragile ecosystem of inputs and outputs that sustains any ongoing enterprise. Limping up the stairs of our empty house, I felt my own failure desperately anchored to the two-ton black monkey digging its nails into my back. “There’s no getting out of this one,” I muttered to myself, stumbling into the bedroom, hoping a heavy blanket and closed eyes would calm the nausea building in my stomach.

Between me and the bed stood a bright ray of sunlight streaming through the blinds of our northwesterly facing window, creating an angular sword-stroke of luminescence cutting across my path. Drawn to my knees in broken humility, my hands came together prayerfully as I closed my eyes and released the well of tears pooling at the corners of my eyes, “Father in heaven, I trust you. I need your help. I want our business to survive but I trust you to take us where we need to be. Please show me the way, help me to see your will and the path forward. I release my failings to you and surrender my ambitions to your will.”

The light was intense upon my closed eyelids, and I had the strangest sensation of the burning orange growing, coming closer, overshadowing me in its fiery luminosity. My heartbeat slowed. My tense fingers loosened their prayer-tuned grip. Deep breaths: in and out, in and out. There was only silence and my gentle easing into peacefulness. Having lost any sense of time, I opened my eyes to a softer sun, set lower behind the tall trees. Alone and steadied, I returned to the room, the reality of the moment, and the pragmatic. A soft whisper in my mind said, “There is always a way forward and, no matter what, all will be well.”

Moving up into Paradiso, Dante the pilgrim continues his search for the deepest truths as he ascends among the souls of heaven, now playing to the Divine song in the light of Truth itself. “So I, directly to the shimmering that spoke, and when it heard it grew more bright, such the delight it gleaned in listening” (Paradiso, Canto 5, Lines 130-132). Light and luminescence permeate Dante’s heaven, and we encounter souls glowing in their reflection of God’s love. “The holy figure in a happy blaze concealed himself by his bright reveling and from within those secret secret rays responded as the following song will sing” (Paradiso, Canto 5, Lines 136-139).

The songs that follow Dante through Paradiso echo God’s loving whisper through the wisdom offered by these souls who have secured their place in Eternity. The light moving in and among them illuminates their actions on earth, amid trial and suffering, to their great cosmic ends, while pointing toward an ongoing opening of Divine revelation in heaven itself. Paradiso’s theme of sun and light is hopeful and revelatory, assuring that the faithful choices, and trust, displayed in our temporal lives reflects onto our soul’s journey afterward, suffused with the Grace-filled opportunity to grow further through discovery in the infinite mystery of God.

At the heart of Dante’s journey through the Divine Comedy has been a quest for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, initiated in his mortal affections for the now eternal Beatrice. Finding her at last atop Mount Purgatory, Dante begins to learn how much more he must learn, particularly about his temporal love for her. Considering Dante’s experience with Beatrice, the rock band, U2, gives us some mortal perspective:

Johnny, take a dive with your sister in the rain
Let her talk about the things you can’t explain
To touch is to heal, to hurt is to steal
If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel
On your knees, boy

She’s the wave, she turns the tide
She sees the man inside the child

It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right
She moves in mysterious ways, yeah
It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right

– U2, Mysterious Ways

Eyes still blinded by the Divine light of Paradiso, Dante is quickly level-set by Beatrice on the deficits of his mortal perspective: “You’re making your mind dull with false imagining – you don’t perceive what you would see, if you could shake it off. You are not on earth, as you believe. Lightning that flees its proper realm is not so swift as your returning to your own.” (Paradiso, Canto 1, Lines 88-93). Mysterious ways indeed!  Whatever we imagine of our Eternal home, falls far short of the spiritual realities He has waiting for us. Dante began his journey seeking a path beyond the beasts blocking his way, a path beyond the sin holding him back from his ultimate desire, represented in Beatrice, the symbol of the Fulfillment of All Desire. Now past the descent through hell and ascent through purgatory, Dante finds the limits of his mortal knowledge in its comprehension of God’s providence.

Encountering Saint Thomas Aquinas in the fourth circle of Paradiso, the sun, Dante is counseled by the wise saint: “People besides should never be too sure of what they judge, like farmers in the corn who count their crop before ears mature. For I’ve seen all the winter a bare thorn looking like nothing but a stiff rough stick, whose crown would blossom when the rose was born, And I have seen a vessel sleek and quick, racing through all its course along the main, founder as it was putting into port. So let no Master Dick and Lady Jane, seeing one rob, another give his all, think they can see with providence divine, Because the one can rise, the other fall” (Paradiso, Canto 13, Lines 130-142).

Many years from the fiery orange glow overshadowing closed eyelids in my sunlit bedroom, I found myself standing at the base of the Cruz de Ferro, the pole and iron cross standing nearly 5,000 feet above sea level atop Monte Irago along the Camino de Santiago. Now 650 miles into the journey and considering what I would leave at the foot of this iconic symbol of the Way, I realized that, though we came on this journey seeking God through the places and people of this pilgrimage, it was He who had found us. Like Dante’s journey through Inferno and Purgatorio, our Camino started as our quest to unify our suffering to Jesus’ Way of the Cross, but we discovered that it was, in fact, God’s quest to conform us to himself.

Thus is Dante moved in Paradiso from the particularities of sin and purgation to the higher refinements of conformity to God’s perfect will. Dante’s search for Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, results in that glorious Trinity finding, refining, and ultimately revealing to him the salvific insight into the gift of free will: “The greatest gift God made for any creature by His own bounty, gift most perfectly like His own excellence, gift He hold most dear, Was from the first the will at liberty: all creatures made to be intelligent were and are so endowed, and only they” (Paradiso, Canto 5, Lines 19-24).

Beatrice proceeds to enlighten Dante by describing vows in the context of this extraordinary gift and why they are irrevocable, ultimately setting up the spiritual logic of Christ’s paschal sacrifice. “You’ll see, then from this line of argument, the high value of vows if they’re so made that God consents as soon as you consent. For when both God and man have sealed the pact they slay this treasure in a sacrifice, and do so, as I say, by a free act. What could restore the loss, what could suffice” (Paradiso, Canto 5, Lines 25-31)? The free will we refused Him in the Fall, could only be restored in Jesus’ sacrifice. We, and Dante, in our mortal knowledge, set out seeking our Creator according to our understanding and with the designs of our desires. Dante reminds us that, all along our journey, and hidden in the mysterious ways of His own designs, God has been seeking us, and our heart, in the sacrifice of our free will to him.

Not so long after descending from the Cruz de Ferro, I found myself in conversation with a very charming, and intelligent, investor. He had approached me, impressed with what he saw as a successful company and fascinated by the potential he saw in helping us grow our business. He spoke of growth, investment, impact, and valuations. Early in our conversations, I asked him if he believed in God and he shared stories of his family life, commitment to attending church, and priorities as a man. I saw signs and serendipity in our paths crossing and began to follow him down the path he showed me. During one of his visits, while he was again speaking of investments and exits, Luke 4:5-6 came to my mind:

5 Then he took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant.

6 The devil said to him, “I shall give to you all this power and their glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish.”

With that warning, the insidiously twisting nature of the process revealed itself as I watched all conversations around the purpose of my business shift from the mission of improving health to the mission of maximizing investor value. Promises of a “long game exit” turned into a focus on short-term decisions to increase profit and quickly “demonstrate increasing EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes depreciation, and amortization).” I woke up to the realization that my original good intentions of doing more, impacting more, and truly changing lives, had been lost among the “what if’s” and “we could’s” of ideas centered on what a windfall bright bring. The velvety possibility of “more” had changed the fundamental nature of “why.”

Now in the sphere of Saturn, Dante the pilgrim encounters Saint Benedict, lamenting corruption within the monasteries he had founded so many years before: “Unto that height he saw this ladder rise, patriarch Jacob, with its topmost parts, and angels swift to duty. But these days No one wishes to climb it, no one starts one foot from off the earth, and so my rule’s nothing but parchment fit to throw away. Where there was once a chapel, now the halls are dens for thieves; and sacks of wormy grain, sacks brimming over, are the brothers’ cowls” (Paradiso, Canto 22, Lines 70-78). Dante the poet saw how the goodness of the monastic orders of his day had fallen from service to those most in need to satisfying the mortal appetites of those meant to serve.

How does this happen? The worldly success of the monasteries brought the possibility of more: more money, more power, more comfort. Saint Benedict continues, “The flesh of mortal beings is so weak, on earth a good beginning may not hold long enough to bring acorns from the oak.” (Paradiso, Canto 22, Lines 85-87). Even the best intentions find themselves challenged in the face of such temptations. Later, Beatrice provides more perspective on the challenge of worldly desires, “Cupidity! You who drown mortal men so far beneath you, no one has the power to lift his eyes out of your waves again! Good will in man is born and comes to flower, but the rains ever battering the ground swell the true plums and turn them soft and sour. For faith and innocence are only found among the children – but they flee at last, even before the down is on the cheek” (Paradiso, Canto 27, Lines 121-127).

Earlier, in Canto 26, and speaking to a blinded Dante, Saint John asks, “Begin, and tell to what felicity your soul aspires as to its single end. It’s well your sight has only gone astray, not died…” (Paradiso, Canto 26, Lines 7-10). Saint John is asking Dante: what is your center? What do you truly desire? A particular beauty of the Divine Comedy is in how it sustains the binary tension between pursuing the “good” and competing worldly desires, our human concupiscence, that makes attaining the “good” so difficult. Saint John presses Dante to explain his desire. “For good, as it is good, and known as good, enkindles love, and lights love all the more according to the good it comprehends” (Paradiso, Canto 26, Lines 28-30). God is the most desirable good. “For this world’s very being, and my own, the death He suffered so that I might live, the joy that I and all believing men Hope for, with that sure knowledge ever alive, have drawn me from the ocean that deceives and set me on the shores of the true love” (Paradiso, Canto 26, Lines 58-63). Thinking back to my brush with a different destiny, or at least a really bumpy ride down the primrose path, I see the tension in my own temptation to worldly desire and the call to a greater destiny; one unified with God’s mysterious purposes in His will for me, the business, and for those sharing in our mutual journey.

After over 500 miles and six weeks of walking, we entered the Plaza del Obradoiro, the square lying to the west of the main façade of the Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela – the culmination of the ancient pilgrimage known as the “Way of St. James.” The “golden square” was packed with peregrinos, many of whom we had seen along the way, including some of our “inner circle” with whom we had shared much of the journey. “You made it!” We were tired and exultant as we embraced each other and many of those special souls we had accompanied on the journey. I thought of Sven, a young man we had encountered a couple of weeks earlier and his response to my question, “What are you looking forward to in Santiago?” He responded, “Seeing all of the people I have encountered on the Camino.”

Sally and I had spoken much about this thought as we considered our arrival into Santiago. The pilgrimage, and it’s culmination, seemed a metaphor for moving through life with the hope of an eternal arrival. His answer spoke to the very human desire to be reunited with those we’ve loved, and lost, along our way. The joy of reunion with all our friends did not disappoint, but it passed. Quickly. Within twenty minutes, everyone had moved on, most to not be seen by us again. Leaving from our hotel on the square two days later, we shouted “Alto!” to our cab driver as we saw Sven, limping through the rain into a completely empty plaza. Jumping out of the car, we greeted him warmly, welcoming him and simultaneously bidding him farewell. Driving off, I wondered how disappointed he must have felt in his arrival, bereft of a throng of friends waiting for him.

Entering the tenth circle of Heaven, the Empyrean, Dante finds himself “enveloped in a live gleaming of light that veiled me in a veil so vivid all around, I lost all sight” (Paradiso, Canto 30, Lines 49-51). Soothed by Divine grace, his eyes are opened in a deeper way: “And I beheld a stream, A river of flashing light that flowed between two shores the spring had touched with wondrous hues, dappled with glimmerings of a golden sheen. And from that river living glints arose to settle on the banks with stippling blooms like rubies in a rounding ring of gold” (Paradiso, Canto 30, Lines 60-66). Having ascended through nine previous circles to this tenth and final level of Heaven, the pilgrim was now standing amid “an ocean filled by one reflecting ray,” a wide ring of light. Looking around he remarks, “…standing above the light surrounding me I saw in far more than a thousand rows the mirroring of the souls that had returned to Paradise…” (Paradiso, Canto 30, Lines 112-114). But it is not reunion on Dante’s mind: “Neither the height nor vastness swept away my clear perception, for I saw that joy in all its quantity and quality” (Paradiso, Canto 30, Lines 118-120). Those souls reflected Divine joy, and drew him all the more fully toward the fulfillment of all desires.

Dante the pilgrim’s heavenly journey is soon complete, but the journey of his life is not over. The pilgrim, newly educated in God’s salvific plan for him, must return to his temporal existence, and fight the good fight of his own salvation. Like Dante, we had to return. Our arrival and reunion in Santiago were a short-lived, temporarily satisfying, glimpse of Heaven. We recognized, in our longing to return to our children and our grandchildren, another glimpse of Heaven, imperfectly mirroring the longing for our Creator built into us. Standing at the edge of the Beatific Vision, Beatrice tells Dante, “The flames of longing, flames that now impel, urging you on to learn more of what you see, delight me all the more the more they swell, But such a thirst you cannot satisfy before you’ve drunk the water of this spring” (Paradiso, Canto 30, Lines 70-74).

Augustine wrote long ago of the restless hunger for God embedded in our hearts. In the Comedia, Dante has taken on us a journey down through all the sinful disorder we can imagine, back up through the heights of God’s mercy, and into the cosmic brightness of eternity, to show us a glimpse of the Unimaginable. He affirms that the thirsts of this life cannot ultimately be satisfied by anything less than our Creator. Within it all, Dante reminds us that we cannot do it alone and that, while we are looking for God in our own lives, we must open our hearts to receive, so he may find us, lovingly guide us, and forgive us when we fail. Midway in the journey of our lives, we still have the opportunity to find, and to be found, if we can keep our eyes on Him, recognize the limits of our own knowledge, and trust that His will is the perfect will for us.