Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Dante's Inferno

For my Humanities class we've had to read a lot of old classics and it's been really great because i don't think i would have otherwise read them ever. All of them have been suprisingly interesting and had some really good morals to their stories. Just recently, today in fact, i've been reading Dante's Divine Comedy. Overall it is a really entertaining story, how Dante came up with the it all, i have no idea, but i'm impressed. Anyways, I was reading today and Dante and Virgil had just reached the first circle of Hell and instead of the moaning and nashing of teeth that Dante was expecting, there were just sighs and people looked peaceful but really sad. Dante asked Virgil about this and Virgil explains to him that these people were virtuous, but were never baptized, therefore couldn't be admitted to heaven. Dante feels really bad for them and asks if there is not anyone who could come down and save them, and Virgil tells him that he had seen the Great Lord come and rescue Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, Rachel, and other early Israelites, but noone else. After reading this i all the sudden had this mental image in my mind of these good people just sitting there waiting because they weren't able to be baptized in this life for one reason or another and that's how it is! There is probably millions if not billions of souls waiting for someone to go do their temple work for them so that they can accept the gospel and not be stuck in "limbo". Granted, i can't help with the temple work, but i can do baptisms for them! Maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but reading this just brought home the importance of going to the temple and doing the work of the dead and that there really are people up there waiting for us to do it for them.

1 comment:

jessica said...

Dante was interesting. I like your insight.