Paradiso: Canto XXII -- St. Benedict

As St. Benedict Joseph Labre has taught us, "Our comfort is not in this world," which is reinforced by the founder of the Benedictines, a different and earlier St. Benedict. Like St. Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas, St. Benedict also laments the degeneracy of his order and of the fact that "so few of his Benedictine monks remain eager to put the world behind them and begin the ascent" (787) up Jacob's Ladder, the Stairway to God through the fixed stars. To reinforce the insignificance of the world on which so many of us fix all of our focus, Beatrice has Dante look to earth beneath the seven spheres through which they've traveled, and he discovers it is merely a speck of dust, insignificant but for the fact that it is the origin of man and the field from which heaven harvests its souls.



All that having been said, it might still seem puzzling that the souls in heaven darken all of heaven with righteous indignation about what is happening on earth, the insignificant speck. An answer to the riddle lies in the fact that God cares about what happens on earth, insignificant speck though it be, for his creation there is in his image and likeness, and in the same way we'd be concerned about the students we teach or the people to whom we minister, doing all we can in our power to facilitate their learning and their communion, God has done all he can to facilitate our turning toward love and salvation. As Fr. Brennan taught us in hell, God gave us himself, and there is literally nothing more for him to give. No wonder heaven darkens with the loss of every soul that looks and is like God.

S.