Starting the Season of Lent with Dante’s Inferno

              I was thinking about what book to recommend for Lent and a lot of titles went in mind from the biography of John Paul II to the works of C.S Lewis. They are all great works but they seem to lack the push one towards repentance. Suddenly, I remembered a book that gave me deep pain and sorrow in both high school and college. This book was Dante's Alighieri's Inferno which is about the author's fictional journey into hell. To get a clear picture of how terrible hell is, below is the inscription written on the gates of Hell:

 "Through me is the way into the woeful city; through me is the way into eternal woe; through me is the way among the lost people. Justice moved my lofty maker: the divine Power, the supreme Wisdom and the primal Love made me. Before me were no things created, unless eternal, and I eternal last. Leave every hope, ye who enter!"

       Actually, the welcome sign is an understatement of the things to come. Dante's journey gets more gruesome as he descends in the circles of hell. This is because as one commits more hideous sins (the worse being a traitor), the closer he gets to the coldness of Satan himself. The notion of reading about the world down below may sound novel but The Inferno does have message in the end. It teaches rather than scares us souls about the reality of sin and how doing bad stuff is not apt to our nature. This may all sound above your head but you just have to pick it up yourself and feel the little demons nibbling on your ear. If you can't chew that, it is still worth picking up just to see how accomodations are down there.

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