Purgatory: Canto 33 -- Eunoe: Dante's Purification Completed

Having experienced this vision of the Beatrice in his Vita, Dante concludes the book with the idea that "if it be the pleasure of Him through whom all things live that my life continue for a few more years, I hope to write of her that which has never been written of any other woman" (2). We enter the final canto of the Purgatorio with the full knowledge that he has accomplished his aim, and the fact that that we've now met Beatrice, been chastised by her, and then born again in God through her has given us a healthy appreciation of what Dante's actually done in fulfilling his promise. What we also know is that he's only just met Beatrice in the terrestrial paradise -- she's about to take him to heaven for the final third of this trilogy.



In the final preparation for this journey, Beatrice has Matilda take him to drink of the waters of Eunoe, which will have the effect of strengthening in him the memory every good. On the way to this riverbank, she explains to Dante the meaning of the prophecy he has just witnessed and provides him with the promise that the Church will be restored to its intended glory -- that no fall is too great for God's redemption should the soul seek it with sincere repentence in its heart. It must first, like Dante, lead itself from error. The Church, like Dante, though, may reply, "I have no recollection/ of ever having been estranged from you./ Conscience does not accuse me of defection" (91-2). The Church, of course, doesn't have Dante's reason of having just drunk from the waters of Lethe. Like John of Parma tried to do with the Franciscans, we, too, have to bring back the earlier spirit of the Church -- to restore its practice with its intended purpose. If the Church is always reconciling, how much more ought the people of whom it is comprised also be.

I leave you with these thoughts in our second canticle, that, like in the Empire Strikes Back, we end this part of the trilogy with a problem, but also with a promise. Dante's promise is that of a soul fulfilled, "in sweetest freshness, healed of Winter's scars;/ perfect, pure, and ready for the Stars" (145-6). In the next canticle, the soteriological promise will be fulfilled, and that covers all of us through God's grace as we move further and closer to his light among the stars.

S.