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Thursday, 5/3/18

Today, in honoring the Apostles James and Phillip, we recall last Sunday's Gospel in which Philip said, "Show us the Father and that will be enough for us."

Please excuse me for going back over what I said in relation to our knowing God. For it  I brought up  the story put together by Dante seven hundred ago.

Dante, who in 1300 was driven from his birthplace of Florence, felt that his sinfulness was too great for him to be saved. However, he came to rely on his two great loves. One was for the Roman poet Virgil who had lived fourteen hundred years earlier; the other was for the saintly Beatrice who had gone to heaven twelve years earlier.

Dante's theme for his great epic had Virgil escorting Dante through hell and  Purgatory. The sights of punishment there, one by one, turned Dante away from his sinfulness.

Virgil, as an unbaptized sinner could nor lead Dante into heaven. Dante, when he arrived there was struck by a strong anomaly: while  he was seeing all things for first time, they seemed somehow familiar to him. Beatrice explained how this came about, she said, "All things0 possess an order between themselves, and this order is the form that makes the universe lil\e God."

The unerring progression of musical sounds in our scales, and of the mathematical progression of the colors of the rainbow show us something of what God is like.