Only once does
he mention Heaven as the state of reunion of families and friends, and
that is when he comments upon the action of the twenty-three spirits in
the Heaven of the Sun, in expressing their agreement with Soloman's
discourse as to the participation which the human body will have, after
the Resurrection in the glories of Paradise:
"So ready and so cordial an Amen
Follow'd from either choir, as plainly spoke
Desire of their dead bodies; yet perchance
Not for themselves, but for their kindred dear,
Mothers and sires and those whom best they loved,
Ere they were made imperishable flames."
(XIV, 65.)
For Dante, Heaven must be the beatitude of the intellect and that
primarily by the intellect's having an intuition full of joy in the
Divine Essence, and secondly by its possessing full light on all those
vexatious problems and mysteries which baffle us in this life.
"Well I perceive that never sated is
Our intellect unless Truth illumines it,
Beyond which nothing true expands itself.
It rests therein, as wild beast in his lair
When it attains it and it can attain it."
(IV, 125.)
In insisting upon the power of the mind to know the truth and to find
perfect happiness in the supernatural act of beholding God face to face,
Dante is not in agreement with Pragmatism, Hegelianism and the "new
Realist" theory--all which make truth elusive to the mind; but he is in
full accord with the teaching of the Catholic Church, which defends the
rights of reason holding, e.
Pages:
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227