Look to the Stars

Dante's divine wisdom for staying on course this Christmas.

Virgil leads Dante up Mount Purgatory. Imagine how slowly he’d have climbed with a smartphone in hand. (Gustave Doré, 1868)

“I can’t get ahead of it,” I told my husband the other night, as I clambered into bed too late again. “I’m up before dawn; I’m working all day and half the night. And I just can’t get ahead of it.”

This is me in Advent. This is me in most seasons, now that my houseful of homeschooled kids has become a houseful of homeschooled teens (and one tween) and my to-do list has metastasized alongside theirs. But Advent’s demands make the hamster wheel spin even faster. Maybe it’s the same for you?

If so, I want you to meet a friend of mine, a man I’ve been spending a lot of time with lately: Dante Alighieri.

You’ve probably heard of his 14th-century masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. Maybe you even read it back in school. I had only dabbled in Dante myself until this fall, when my 16-year-old twins and I took a deep dive into all three books of the Commedia. We’re in the thick of Purgatorio now, using the lyrical translation by Jean and Robert Hollander quoted below. And I must say, Dante is a font of wisdom—especially about time.

In nearly every canto and cornice of Dante’s Purgatory, we are reminded of the preciousness of time, how swiftly it passes, and how dangerous it is to squander it.

The warnings begin on the shores of Mount Purgatory in Canto Two, where Stoic philosopher Cato blasts Dante and his fellow newly arrived souls as “laggard spirits” for dallying to listen to a pretty song instead of hastening to the mountain that leads to heaven. In Canto Four, we meet the late repentant souls of Ante-Purgatory, a sort of cosmic waiting room where those who made God wait for their attention on earth must now wait an equal amount of time before even beginning their purgative climb to heaven. And then there are the slothful souls of Canto Eighteen, who made it into Purgatory but now must atone for their slowness to pursue sanctity on earth by running as a “frenzied mob” in the afterlife, tears flowing as they shout examples of holy haste (“Mary ran with haste into the mountains”) and prods to pick up the pace (“Quickly, quickly, lest time be lost for lack of love”).

Dante meets the multitude of the slothful. Most artists depict them as breathless streakers, but Doré focuses on their grief over wasted time. (Gustave Doré, 1868)

Love for God—and its lack—is a major theme in Purgatorio, and the urgency that throbs throughout the book is directly tied to the loving desire for union with God in heaven. Souls who lacked that desire on earth must make up for their lukewarmness after death. Now, as never before, they feel an urgent longing for God and regret every moment not spent in His service.

The pilgrim Dante feels it, too. As he notes in Canto Four, while beginning his ascent, the mountain leading to heaven isn’t like an earthly one, and grit alone won’t scale it:

One may go up to San Leo or descend to Noli

or mount to the summits of Bismàntova or Cacùme

on foot, but here one had to fly—

I mean with the swift wings and plumage

of great desire …

When Dante’s own desire flags—as often happens when he notices others noticing him—his guide Virgil tells him to focus back on the stars, symbols of eternity. “Press your heels into the ground,” Virgil says in Canto Nineteen. “Raise your eyes to the lure the Eternal King whirls with His majestic spheres.”

It’s good advice for all of us. Like Dante, most of us find it easier to focus on earth and other people than on Christ, even in the season that celebrates His birth. We may begin Advent by saying we’ll keep it simple, but as calendars fill and shopping lists swell, we morph into whirling dervishes of holiday hustle. Then we look up on Christmas morning and find we’ve traded the one thing necessary (Luke 10:42) for one million things that felt more urgent. At that point, it’s tough to argue with Virgil’s rebuke in Canto Fourteen, where he laments how easily Satan sidetracks us from the celestial feast God sets before our eyes, if only we’d take time to look:

But you mortals take the bait, so that the hook

of your old adversary draws you to him …

The heavens call to you and wheel about you,

Revealing their eternal splendors,

But your eyes are fixed upon the earth.

Dante and Virgil meet the late repenters, who wait a lifetime—literally—to begin the journey to holiness they delayed starting on earth. (Gustave Doré, 1868)

So what’s a scattered soul to do? How do we keep our eyes fixed on heaven when we have loved ones counting on our holiday preparations and presence (and presents), and monastic solitude isn’t an option? How do we discern what’s skippable and what’s not?

I think I found an answer last night in church, while my kids and I were making our weekly Eucharistic holy hour. I was thumbing through my December issue of Magnificat and read this line from a Christmas sermon by our newest Doctor of the Church, Saint John Henry Newman:

Let us at this season approach Him with awe and love, in whom resides all perfection, and from whom we are allowed to gain it. Let us come to the Sanctifier to be sanctified. Let us come to Him to learn our duty, and to receive grace to do it.

Maybe it really is that simple: We come to the Sanctifier to be sanctified. Then we let Him rewrite our to-do list, let Him reorder our commitments, let Him whisper what we should do and what we should leave undone. We let Him lead us up the mountain, rather than trying to blindly bushwhack our own way.

We do that, first and foremost, by entrusting our time to the Lord. We entrust not only the grand arc of our decades but also all those hidden moments in between, the ones Dante’s fellow climbers in Purgatory would give anything to get back.

We let Jesus set our schedules and let Jesus disrupt them, just as Mary did when she answered the angel’s life-upending invitation with her simple, humble Fiat. And like Mary, we lean on His grace all through the twists and turns of our earthly climb, keeping our eyes on the bright Morning Star (Rev. 22:16) who shines on us even when our path is rocky and our lungs are burning and we can barely see the next step.

We keep our eyes on Christ by giving our time to Christ, which in turn keeps alive our desire for Christ. And by His grace we keep doing it—moment by moment, year after year—until He leads us home.

Dante looks to the stars. (Gustave Doré, 1868) “They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage … ” (Matt. 2: 10 – 11)