"How different are those openings from those in
Hell," he says, "for here we enter through songs and down there through
fierce wailings" (XII, 112).
Although our poet, imbued with the Catholic doctrine, teaches that
intercessory prayer helps the soul to shorten its term in Purgatory--a
doctrine bound up with the doctrine of the Communion of Saints--it must
never be forgotten that Dante is a Catholic preacher when he insists
that personal effort aided by God's grace, is the thing of supreme
importance in the matter of salvation and purification. Neither
lip-sorrow nor the sacraments themselves unless accompanied by true
sorrow and repentance, can profit the soul. "He cannot be absolved who
doth not first repent, nor can he repent the sin and will it at the same
time, for this were contradiction to which reason cannot assent" (Inf.,
XXVII, 118.) Prayer can help the soul struggling in life or in Purgatory
proper, but the assistance derived from prayer can never do away with
the necessity of personal penance. "Conquer thy panting with the soul
that conquers every battle if with its heavy body it sinks not down."
Let us now hear how Dante sings "of that second realm in which the human
soul is purified and becomes worthy to ascend to Heaven" (I, 5).
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