Description
Chapter 1 Introduction
Who are the Chosen guests? The Chosen are gifted with the ability to love through Christ, but face the challenge of marrying the right partner. They receive dreams, but must interpret them. The chosen have to fight battles, and then are betrayed, which brings them to tears. Forced into exile, they make their journey a pilgrimage, during which they make a sacrifice to God. At death their friends honor them with proper burials.
Chapter 2 Hell
Dante, on Good Friday, 1300, passed from Italy, into the depths of Hell without Hope. His love St. Beatrice, sent Virgil as a guide, through the intercession of St. Lucy. Dante discovered the punishment of the next world, consisted of the eternal experience of one’s sins. There is no respite for the sinner from the evil which he worked on earth. The suffering of the evil, led Dante to tears. His compassion was rebuked by Virgil, as being against the providence of God’s justice.
Chapter 3 Purgatory
From the depths of Hell, Dante and Virgil, climbed upwards achieving the beach in front of Mount Purgatory. Their climb through Mt. Purgatory’s seven terraces to the opening at the glade before the river Lethe, allowed Dante to explain the purpose of punishment, in purifying the sinner. In Purgatory, men suffer as greatly as in Hell, but their pain instead of being solely punishment, purges the stain. When the seventh level is achieved, the penance they have endured, allows their passage across the river Eunoe where memories of the good of the world are revived in the new saint, after being purged of all memory in the Lethe. The penitents, are sorrowful, concerned not with their sins, but with begging Dante for prayers from himself and others on Earth, who could win their release from some of their justly allotted pain. While suffering, the men are constantly singing the praises of God, along the path from the beach to St. Peter’s Gate, and thence to Heaven.
Chapter 4 Paradise
At the edge of Paradise, Virgil disappeared, as Moses with Christ. Dante was joined by his love, St. Beatrice. She scolded Dante for not loving her enough, but he was still allowed to cross into Paradise. In Paradise, each man is rewarded according to his effort on earth, his love for God continuing to grow each day, without ever, being filled to the brim. A saint accedes in love to the justice of his reward. They who loved more on earth, are capable of accepting more love in Heaven. Dante fell back, for trying to understand rather than revel in the beauty of the Trinity.
Chapter 5 Aeneid
Virgil, Dante’s guide, led the pagan world to their understanding of Christ’s arrival, through his rendition of Aeneas’s founding of Rome. Rome’s birth by way of the survivors of Troy, meant she inherited as enemies, both the Greeks and the Carthaginians. Aeneas’s voyage, was repeated by Sts. Peter and Paul coming, to Rome by sea, after the fall of Jerusalem.
Chapter 6 Suetonius Caesar
Why has Caesar been the world’s most loved man? What is the need inside man, for a king? From nature, certain men rule, others seek to serve. Caesar overthrew the republic to make himself emperor. Why did Dante, a free citizen, seek a new Caesar?
Chapter 7 Caius Caesar Caligula
Caligula was the son of Germanicus, who was murdered by Tiberius, who then raised Caligula, as his heir. Why did Tiberius create such a monster to set upon the people of Rome? Why within three rulers after Caesar, was the monster Caligula the result? Is Caligula the apotheosis of the desire to serve false gods, self destruction?
Chapter 8 Petrarch’s Laura
Petrarch, on Good Friday, 1327, was blessed with a vision of Our Lady. He spent the rest of his life, mourning the loss of her presence. Petrarch like Dante, composed his great work about the eternal span of transcendent love. Laura was his gift to Our Lady. In his title, he honored the monks, living in small cabins, lauras, who sat and contemplated a picture of Our Lady. Their love was nothing as to one, who had been in Mary’s presence. Longing for Our Lady’s love, seems to be harder than having experienced it, but the loss, of Her presence, rendered a pain of separation, greater, than the unrequited longing for union.
Chapter 9 Anselm’s Monologium
St. Anselm, is the child who ascended the Alps, to take Communion from the cupbearer of God. As a philosopher, using only reason, he determined the qualities of God, and the revelation available of the Trinity to all men, who only consider the world, through reason. St. Anselm explored the Truth of the Word, and the life given to the Spirit, by the love between the Father and the Word.
Chapter 10 David, God’s King
When Israel was young, God instructed Samuel to appoint two kings for Israel, Saul and David. God experimented with having the Jews ruled by men He chose. The examples, of the kingships of Saul and David, explain why the City of God and the City of Man, will remain separate kingdoms, until the Second Coming of Christ.
Chapter 11 On a Few Lines of Virgil by Montaigne
Montaigne preached against the sacrifices of the saints, because he favored tending to the duties of the world. Montaigne’s position reflected all those parents through history, who opposed their child’s desire to marry Christ. Montaigne, mocked men in the ‘Turkish’ empire, who put god before themselves, but he was actually deriding the prayers of the hermit saints, in their lauras, to fulfill their union with Christ. Thus, the opposition of the world, to the love shown by Petrarch, for Our Lady.
Chapter 12 King Cophetua and Tybert the Cat
King Cophetua, like Antonio in the Merchant, had resisted the pull of marriage, until he was taken with the beggar girl across from his castle, being struck with an arrow from Cupid. The love Cophetua offered, he solemnized in the Church, by, as St. Francis did, marrying Lady Poverty, in public.
Tybert the Cat, was sent after the failure of the Bear, to outwit Reynard the Fox. Tybert had no hope against Reynard, as a subject, he followed the orders of the King, into battle. For Christ, not victory, but the willingness to follow the instructions of God, is paramount. To fall in the attempt at overturning evil, is to drink from the chalice of which the sons of Zebedee shared with Christ.
Chapter 13 Mabinogion Geraint the Son of Erbin
What is the duty of a knight to the people of Christ? Are knights always opposed to Christ? Is the damage to a knight’s body, reflected in his soul? Does God raise up a man to defend the people? Even in the midst of conflict, the good knight can be gifted with love for another, through Our Lord. For a knight, like all members of the Church, the love of Christ, must come before any other. Can the other, accept the primacy of Christ? Is there any limit to the suffering a knight must accept while he lives? If he achieves victory, he admits, it is only through Christ, not himself.
Chapter 14 Seven against Thebes, Escalus
In Greece, the sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polyneices, struggled over the ruling the kingdom of Thebes. The crime of Oedipus came from his father, Laius, who revolted against god, by having a child. The penalty for Laius’s crime, fell not only upon him, but Oedipus and his sons. Men inherit not only gold or poverty, but the crimes of their fathers, as we all suffer for the sin of Adam and Eve.
Chapter 15 The Music of Paradise is the Parables of the Lord
The first of the musicians who sing the Parables, Simon Catling, or Simeon of the Temple. Second, St. Peter, was the inheritor of Christ’s mission. Third, Hugh, was Hugh of Lincoln, who became St. Hugh, the Bishop of Lincoln. Rebeck was Rechab, the prophet who recruited Jehu to attack the idolaters. The James’s are the philosophers, who disputed over the Blood of Christ. Soundpost, was Sophonias, a prophet, who chastised the Jews about their idolatry. These great men made Music with the Word, of Christ.
Chapter 16 The Shoes of the Fisherman
Who waited at the gate? St. Peter. Was it right St. Peter was chosen, one out of the twelve? Although St. Peter, had betrayed Christ, he was sorrowful and forgiven. St. Peter did nothing through himself, unlike Caesar, but only as a representative of Christ. St. Peter cured the lame, and then demanded belief from the witnesses. The question addressed by St. Peter, was how to believe though I have not seen, while St. Peter had been blessed to accompany God for three years, and then betrayed Him. Men are not God and therefore have to accept the experience of others through testimony, because distance separates man from experience, but the Word is impervious to the distance it has traveled, for Truth is the Truth, regardless of time or space. Such is the inheritance of St. Peter and those who have also walked in the Shoes of the Fisherman.
Chapter 17 The Wedding Invitation
When the King, sent invitations to his Son’s marriage, the invitations were rejected. After punishing the ungrateful, He sent into the roads and byways for others to come. Romeo and Juliet, is filled with the others who were called by God to the Wedding of His Son, upon Golgotha. Many came to serve, others to scorn. Saint or sinner, each of the characters in Romeo and Juliet, had a part to play in the Wedding where Christ is the groom. Instead of being placed at the beginning, this list of the characters of Romeo and Juliet is at the end of the book. If a question arises about who is who, or why he is a certain person, the names are easily referenced here.
The question, is martyrdom the only way to serve Christ? Is there a martyrdom other than through violence? All the guests at the Wedding dealt with this conundrum of salvation. This was the question of Dante about the career of St. Francis, who died worn out from his duties to God. Was St. Francis a martyr, or a fool?
Who was Dante actually in love with? Whom did he see on the Church steps?
Is suicide a path to heaven?
Where is the doorway to Hell?
Whose footsteps did Dante follow into hell?
Where is the Gateway to Heaven? The exact address!
When did the devotion to Mary at our deaths begin?
What connects Romeo to Hamlet?
Who are ghosts? Are they the good or the evil?
