Paradiso: Canto XXIV -- The Triumph of Christ and St. Peter's Dance

Faith, the active response to divine revelation about which Fr. Brennan has already spoken, involves more than belief -- it involves a choice, which according to Aristotle is a "rational principle and thought," to pursue the good. The choices that we make are predicated upon our faith, upon our responding to grace, which is God's activity within the human person, according to our capacity. Often, as in the case of Blessed Luchesio and Buonadonna, who set in motion the Secular Franciscan Order, these choices are life changing, and they become so indelible a part of who we are that we cannot help but appropriately respond to God's love through them.



Dante's examination of faith is this kind of response -- without hesitation or consternation, he addresses each of St. Peter's questions, and the alacrity with which he correctly (and succinctly) deals with these complex issues of faith (while still managing to denounce Boniface VIII, line 110) greatly pleases the first vicar, who dances three times around him in the same form and manner with which he danced around Beatrice upon seeing her. What he had taken from her as self-evident, he receives from Dante as proof of his total orientation toward God, and this examination precedes his advancing into God's immediate presence in the same way that his lying prostrate before the angel who cut the P's into his forehead preceded his purification on the Mount. The importance of this examination preceding those of hope and love points to the fact that faith is the foundation upon which we engage those above.

S