Bernard as guide, just as Virgil had
withdrawn when he was powerless and when Beatrice was needed.
The question here presents itself: In what does Dante place the
happiness of Heaven? Does he paint such a Heaven that it shows
principally the rectifications of the inequalities of this life--a
Heaven of such happiness, e.g., that the poor will love poverty or be
resigned to it in the hope of possessing the riches of this Eternity? Is
Dante's Heaven one in which happiness is so alluring that innocence will
gladly submit to calumny and faith will lovingly welcome the sword or
stake, in the certain confidence of gaining unending glory or bliss?
The Paradiso does reward poverty, crown innocence, glorify martyrdom,
but it was never intended to be an account of what takes place in the
real Heaven, or to be a description of the particular acts of goodness
which win Heaven for the soul, or a rapturous picture appealing to the
emotions of the believer and alluring him from earth.
Does Dante place the happiness of Heaven in the bliss and glorification
of family reunion?
He is too good a theologian to place the essential happiness of Heaven
merely in the joy of family reunion. He does not ignore that feature of
eternity, but he does not stress it, because temperamentally he is moved
less by sentiment of family and ties of friendship than by his curiosity
for knowledge, by his yearnings to behold Eternal Wisdom.
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