In today’s reading, Dante gets his first look at the Divine Empyrean: the reality of all realities. Having ascended through all nine levels of Heaven, he comes to the Garden of Paradise. But things are still not in their final form: to see the light without blemish, he must drink deeply from the waters of Paradise (recall the river Lethe in Purgatory, Canto 28), at which point the garden expands into a giant rose: a symbol of the totality of the redeemed.

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