This past year, I’ve been working my way through a reading of Dante Alighieri’s epic poem “The Divine Comedy,” in which the poet narrator travels first through the circles of hell, then climbs the mountain of purgatory, and ultimately reaches the paradise of heaven. As we enter into the month of November, a time the Church has designated especially for praying for the souls of the dead, it is particularly fitting that I am about halfway through my reading of purgatory.
This is the season that we remember we must die. Through the ages, this reminder was meant to spur on a desire to do good before it is too late, a desire to make a positive mark on our world, to promulgate virtue, to reach out for the happiness our God allows and for which He has built us.