Spiritual Direction From Dante

Paul Pearson

Description

Join Father Paul Pearson of the Oratory as he guides you on a spiritual journey through one of the great classics of Christian literature, Dante's Purgatorio. Purgatory is the least understood of the three possible "destinations" when we die (though unlike heaven or hell it is not an eternal one) and is mysterious to many Christians and even to many Catholics today. As he did in his first volume in the Spiritual Direction from Dante trilogy, Avoiding the Inferno, Father Pearson adroitly draws out the great spiritual insights hidden in The Divine Comedy. Learn how and why: Dante's presentation of Purgatory is something beautifully hopeful. Freedom is the dominant theme here and the rejoicing of captives delivered from their prisons the dominant tone. Purgatory is filled with good people, people well on their way to becoming saints. They are increasingly concerned for one another and generous, the more so the higher on the mountain they climb. They are interested in one another's well-being and rejoice in one another's victories as though they were their own. The sufferings on Mount Purgatory are not something that happens to the souls there; they happen for them. This has all been designed for their benefit, and they are grateful to God for making it possible. Purgatory is God's merciful plan for allowing us to rediscover the joy and freedom of being human, the joy for which we were created but which sin has smothered and distorted.This is what we can be. This is what we can begin to be, even now, if only we will separate ourselves from sin. What are we waiting for? Join Father Pearson in Ascending Mount Purgatory.

Sujets

• Catholic Church
• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: TAN Books
• Date de parution: 14 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781505117554
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Spiritual Direction From Dante
SPIRITUAL DIRECTION
from
DANTE
ASCENDING MOUNT PURGATORY
Paul Pearson of the Oratory
TAN Books Gastonia, North Carolina
Spiritual Direction From Dante: Ascending Mount Purgatory © 2020 Paul A. Pearson
All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts used in critical review, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form whatsoever, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible—Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright © 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Excerpts from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America © 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.—Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used with permission.
Cover design by Caroline Green
Cover image: Dante and Virgil climbing toward the first Terrace of Ante-Purgatory, engraving by Gustave Dore, De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman Images
Interior illustrations: Engravings by Gustave Doré (1832-1883), Bridgeman Images
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020936561
ISBN: 978-1-5051-1753-0
Published in the United States by TAN Books PO Box 269 Gastonia, NC 28053 www.TANBooks.com
Printed in the United States of America
To my spiritual directees, my companions on the spiritual journey
CONTENTS
Foreword
Preface
I NTRODUCTION
P URGATORIO
C ANTO 1 Self-Help or Divine Help The Damaging Power of Sin Turning Points in Our Lives The Necessity of the Church
C ANTO 2 Spiritual Inertia Eagerness for Our Heavenly Home Human Love Purified The Distracted Life
C ANTO 3 Sorrow and Self-Pity Trusting When We Feel Alone No Easy Way The Preciousness of Time
C ANTO 4 Constantly Pruning Unfruitful Growth Preparation for the Hard Climb A Path Without Signs Hasty Judgment
C ANTO 5 Shame and Sorrow Baptismal Water Is Thicker Than Blood Forgiving and Being Forgiven Love Your Enemies
C ANTO 6 Our Spiritual Responsibilities The Pushes and Pulls of Grace The Earthly Kingdom and the Heavenly Kingdom
C ANTO 7 True Cause for Rejoicing Learning to Depend in a Spirit of Joy Heavenly Treasure
C ANTO 8 Divine Protection The Spiritual Conspiracy The Wildness of God’s Mercy Be Not Afraid: Spiritual Confidence
C ANTO 9 Visions and Dreams A Chart of Our Spiritual Progress The Illusion of Narrowness Approaching God for Forgiveness
C ANTO 10 The Building Blocks of Holiness The Attraction of Virtue Our Attitude to Suffering The Honesty of Humility
C ANTO 11 Being a Child of God The Demands of Our Adoption Self-Imposed Burdens The Possibility of Change
C ANTO 12 Lightening the Load Hatred of Sin The Divine Conspiracy of Mercy A Call to a Different Kind of Life
C ANTO 13 A Weapon Against Every Foe Happiness and Human Connection Avoiding Occasions of Sin Comparisons Are Odious
C ANTO 14 God’s Megaphone Rejoicing as One Decline and Fall of Our World
C ANTO 15 The Darkening of Conscience Getting More by Sharing The Power of Imagination Real and Imaginary Visions
C ANTO 16 The Dark Power of Passion Grant Us Peace The Stain of Original Sin
C ANTO 17 The Gradual Clearing of Our Conscience Imagination and Passion Spiritual Eagerness Spiritual Indifference
C ANTO 18 Trusting Like Little Children Can Love Do No Wrong? Different Strokes for Different Folks
C ANTO 19 The Siren Call of Temptation Stripping Away the Disguise of Sin No Pain, No Gain Money and Happiness The Things Above
C ANTO 20 Over-steering Toward Virtue For Love or Money Our True Inheritance Children of the Light
C ANTO 21 Hungering for Heaven Moments of Clarity Are We There Yet? Unlikely Channels of Grace
C ANTO 22 Jumping to Conclusions Missing the Target To Whom Much Is Given Avoiding Occasions of Sin
C ANTO 23 Redirected Energies Temptations as Spiritual Exercise Willing the Pain
C ANTO 24 Single-mindedness Detachment Holy Desire for the Next Life Immediate Gratification
C ANTO 25 The Solitary Way Avoiding Fatal Reactions Chastity as a Fullness of Loving, Not an Absence
C ANTO 26 Self-deception and Temptation Holy Connectedness Any Mess Whatever Holy Shame
C ANTO 27 Will It Kill Me? The Power of Personal Connection The New Life of Grace Spiritual Expectations The Bliss of Freedom
C ANTO 28 Through the Lens of Joy Unselfconscious Love Abandoned Burdens
C ANTO 29 Full-Blooded Happiness Liturgical Splendor A Divinely Instituted Church
C ANTO 30 Our Vocation to the Church Being an Instrument of God Heartfelt Contrition
C ANTO 31 Say You’re Sorry The Power of Fear The Crippling Fear of Failure
C ANTO 32 God and the Human Heart The Church, the Ark of Salvation Staying Alive
C ANTO 33 At the Foot of the Cross With the Church Saved Together Thanksgiving—the Foundation of Hope
Acknowledgments
FOREWORD
W hen Dante Alighieri went on his literary tour of hell, purgatory, and heaven, it was not just so that he could write a very interesting travelogue. Nor was it merely to see how the sinners in hell suffered penalties fit for their sins, or how the souls in purgatory were being purged for theirs, or even how great was the joy of the saints in heaven. No, the journey was necessary for Dante’s own salvation. He needed to see where he was in danger of going, and where he ought to be going, and the challenges he would face on the way. There were lessons for him on each step of the journey.
What Father Paul Pearson is teaching us in his three-part study of Dante’s journey is that the poet’s lessons are for us as well. In Ascending Mount Purgatory we learn why Dante conceives Purgatory as a mountain; why Dante receives seven letter P’s on his forehead, which must be erased before he is fit to enter heaven; why when the first is erased, the others become fainter. All of these and countless others are lessons that apply to our own spiritual combat.
We also learn why the Church is necessary for our journey to holiness and thus to heaven. Indeed, there are even lessons for Virgil, Dante’s guide for the first two parts of his journey. Has anyone else ever pointed out how Virgil learns that his exclusion from heaven is not simply a matter of God’s arbitrary will, but that he too had the opportunity to make it to heaven but squandered that chance?
As an Oratorian, naturally Fr. Pearson turns to the wisdom of our founder, St. Philip Neri, for help in explaining Dante. Both men, after all, were Florentines, and, although St. Philip lived two and a half centuries later, the city of their birth had its influence on each. Our more proximate founder, of the Toronto Oratory, Fr. Jonathan Robinson, writes about the Florentine influence on St. Philip in his book In No Strange Land: The Embodied Mysticism of Saint Philip Neri (Kettering, OH., Angelico Press, 2015), and on the tradition of spiritual combat that inspires the Purgatorio and much of the spiritual teaching of St. Philip in Spiritual Combat Revisited (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2003).
If one wants to learn about human nature, both the depths to which fallen human nature can go as well as the greatness of which we are capable at our best, much can be learned from psychologists and philosophical psychologists, from Aristotle and Freud, from Jung and Peterson. If one wants to learn about what human nature can be when aided by divine grace, one can look to our Lord, our Lady and the saints, and for a scientific perspective, to the treatises of Aquinas, DeSales, and the Carmelite mystics.
But there has always been another school from which we can learn such things, that of the artists and the poets. Who better to teach us about human nature than Homer and Sophocles, Shakespeare and Austen, Trollope and O’Connor? Who better, perhaps, than Dante, undoubtedly one of the greatest of the poets and arguably the greatest? With Fr. Pearson as your Virgil, you will learn new reasons why Dante is in that discussion. More importantly, the great Florentine will teach you lessons of the soul, lessons which will help you “avoid the inferno” and “ascend Mount Purgatory”, finally achieving rest in that final destination which all wise men seek: paradise.
Father Daniel Utrecht of the Oratory
PREFACE
P urgatory holds a strange fascination for many people from surprisingly different walks of life. As a convert to Catholicism, I remember purgatory as one item on that long list of issues I needed to resolve, a sticking point on the pathway to conversion. The doctrine of purgatory seemed to suggest that God, who allows so much suffering to enter our messy lives, is unwilling to admit us to eternal life without inflicting yet more of it upon us. Why so much suffering? Now, many years later, it seems odd to have thought such thoughts, but think them I did. And I am not alone.
A few years after my conversion, as a brand new Oratorian brother, I found myself waiting with twenty other equally overwrought people in the surgical waiting room of a hospital. The room seemed designed for producing tension. In the middle was a red telephone, a direct line from surgery, to give updates to the families and loved ones keeping vigil there. Staring at others is considered impolite, but since staring blankly was about all we were capable of doing in our current emotional state (and staring at the telephone was too unnerving), the television set provided a welcome distraction at first. But the annoying morning talk show playing on it made matters worse, not better. A non-Catholic relative of mine, looking for any distraction she could find, blurted out to me rather awkwardly, “So what is this you Catholics believe about purgatory?” It felt like a painful topic in the circumstances and too personal for so public a space, but I tried to answer her question as best (and as quietly) as I could. After a few minutes, I was sure that I