La somma sapienza e ’l primo amore.[17]
This means, of course, the Blessed Trinity, but the last word about the Blessed Trinity is—Love. Love can be stern, and outraged love can draw down, as it were, by the law of being rather than by such vengeful wrath as we humanly attribute to the Most High, an unimaginable ruin and loss upon the outrager. In the stern, grim, cruel, sometimes grotesquely revolting picture Dante draws of the eternal future sinners can deliberately make for themselves, we see but the fruits of Love offered and rejected—the inevitable outcome of their own choice.
When we enter the second kingdom, and begin to climb the mount which forms the pedestal to Eden, the home of man’s innocency, the breath of Love is stronger and its radiance more clear. It reveals itself in the changing beauty of sky and landscape, in the glories of star-light, dawn and sunset and high noon, in the glad brilliance of wild-flowers, in the melody and harmony of music, but, not least, in the very structure and arrangement of Purgatory. Seven terraces ring the mountain round—one above another—separated by rugged cliffs and sheer precipices which Dante needs all his cragsmanship to overcome. And on each terrace one of the seven deadly sins is purged—Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, Lust. These are arranged on a scheme which brings into relief a great principle—that all our actions, good or evil, are the fruits of Love—right love or wrong—
Esser convene
Amor sementa in voi d’ogni virute
E d’ ogne operazion che merta pene.[18]
These sins are all results of Love—excessive or defective, or aimed at the wrong object; and the purgatorial discipline is just the action of the educative Love of God upon willing penitents—straightening, developing, governing, and directing the disordered love that has so marred and stunted the beauty of their souls. The discipline and the humiliation are seen for what they are, and the Divine Love that speaks through them finds a ready and prompt response from souls “happy in the fire,” because of the hope of what it can do for them.
Contenti
Nel fuoco, perchè speran di venire