Spiritual Direction from Dante

Hell and how to avoid it are perennial topics of interest for believing Christians and others. With good reason. Entire libraries have been written on the subject. Most people, even those familiar with his classic, do not realize that Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, chock-full as it is of history and politics, is a masterpiece of spiritual writing. The most famous of his three volumes is the Inferno, an account of Dante's journey through the underworld, where he sees the horror of sin firsthand.

Join Father Paul Pearson of the Oratory as he guides you on a spiritual journey through one of the great classics of Christian literature, Dante’s Purgatorio. Purgatory is the least understood of the three possible “destinations” when we die (though unlike Heaven or Hell it is not an eternal one) and is mysterious to many Christians and even to many Catholics today. As he did in his first volume in the Spiritual Direction from Dante trilogy, Avoiding the Inferno, Father Pearson adroitly draws out the great spiritual insights hidden in The Divine Comedy.

In Spiritual Direction from Dante: Yearning for Paradise, the Oratorian Father Paul Pearson provides a detailed but accessible spiritual commentary on the last volume of Dante’s masterpiece, Divine Comedy. Fr. Pearson takes listeners step-by-step through the text, explaining the spiritual lessons Dante intends his listeners to learn. These lessons are particularly important, both in Dante’s day and in our own, due to the watered-down image of heavenly bliss the world offers us.