Purgatory: Canto 26, The Lustful Sodomites

Having spent the whole day in service to my son, and having just given him a chaste kiss goodnight, I will sit and write two homilies for this canto and the next so that tomorrow the Dantefidelis will have something to which to respond besides the cantos. To begin, then, in this last cornice, we find two kinds of lustful -- the lustful who, like Paulo and Francesca, held the love of another in greater stead than their love for God, and the lustful who were intrinsically disordered in their inclinations -- both kinds repented of their desires in time to achieve salvation, which is what saves them from being hell-bait. Minos would have placed these particular sinners in either the second circle of the carnal, whipped eternally in the tornado of passion that lust is, or in the third round of the seventh circle, racing for eternity through a sterile desert landscape with hot brands gently falling upon their bodies. Here they are, safely ensconched within a burning ring of fire, kissing one another chastely without desire, like many tongues of flame lapping against one another in a funeral pyre.



Dante's La Vita Nuova also sees his burning in grief, and that he tells these penitents of his goal in terms of grace and love after casting a shadow on them that makes their fire seem even redder, is sufficient proof that perhaps on this ledge, too, he may spend some time for immoderate desire. His discourse, though, is addressed to those who were "hermaphroditic" in their physical relationships with others, and he treats these penitent with the same respect he showed their counterparts in hell. One, in fact, is even praised by Dante for the verses he composed while the lives of the two yet overlapped. Adam's project on the eschatological treatment of homosexuality will undoubtedly be enriched by this canto and by Dante's sincere interactions with those purging themselves of this vice while replenishing within them the corresponding virtue of chastity.

Our poets seek completion in Christ through an imbalance in favor of virtue rather than vice. The whole truth must inundate the vessel yet created in God's image before that image might be ready to purge itself of the flames that burn it. Like St. Maximilian, who could not engage in partial truths, Pope teaches in his fourth epistle that "'the Universal Cause/ Acts not by partial, but by general laws;'/ And makes what happiness we justly call/ Subsist not in the good of one, but all." It is for this reason that at this point, the penitent seek to join in consanguinous union with one another, for they want to participate in a love that is an appropriate desire for the common good -- as do we all, at this point in our journey.

S.