uffering is necessary. Once the seventh P has finally been removed, the soul must pass through a ring of fire that separates the terrace of lust from the earthly paradise. All souls, even the most saintly who need to spend no time at any of the seven areas down below, need to pass through this fire. In the earthly paradise, a procession symbolic of the books of the Bible passes before Dante. (I presume that this procession passes before all souls at this climax to the climb.) At the center of the procession in a "caroccio," a war-chariot symbolic of the Church, rides Beatrice. Does each soul have in the car a personal saint, the soul in heaven of greatest personal importance? If so, then perhaps this saint, like Beatrice, scolds the soul for former sinfulness, wringing from it for one last time tears of remorse. Afterwards, the soul crosses the River Lethe, having been cleansed through this immersion even of the memory of sinfulness. The car then undergoes a series of changes symbolic of the history of the church and the soul is bathed in the River Eune, reinforcing, thereby, the memory of its former virtuous deeds. Perhaps all souls, therefore, like Dante, end their stay on Mt. Purgatory with a reminder of God's revelation--both in Scripture and in ecclesiastical history--and with the memory of sin removed and the memory of virtue intensified. So prepared, absolved of actual sins and purified of deadly sins, the soul is ready for the ascent in the final canticle. The Climb All of this may sound excessively contrived, but this canticle, by far the most human of the three, does not convey this effect to me when I read it. Only this canticle takes place on our planet, in our atmosphere, with our sun rising and setting. The souls here are capable of growth, delight, and sharing. Since they retain many of their human intellectual limitations (unlike the souls in Heaven who can all read Dante's mind), they retain their curiosity. They are fa...
