Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

“Radiating The Love That Moves The Sun And Stars” (2021 Blogpost)

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“Arguably the most important official document to proceed from the Second Vatican Council was the ‘Dogmatic Constitution on the Church,’ written ‘to unfold more fully’ the ‘inner nature and universal mission’ of the Church. (LG 1.) The document is better known by its Latin title, ‘Lumen Gentium,’ taken from its first sentence: ‘Christ is the light of nations.’ By proclaiming the Gospel, explains Lumen Gentium, the Church ‘brings the light of Christ to all people.’ It is fitting, therefore, that the theme of the bicentennial year of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati is ‘Radiate Christ.’

[. . .]

“And the light of Christ, a light greater than any other, is love. Indeed, in the final words of Dante’s Paradiso, it is the radiating ‘love that moves the sun and other stars.'”    –Dr. Kenneth Craycraft, “Radiating The Love That Moves The Sun and Stars,” The Catholic Telegraph, September 2, 2021

“The Love That Moves The Sun and Other Stars” (2015)

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blue-circular-stained-glass-window“Today I invite you to reflect on these final lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy. I would recommend reading them many times, contemplating what it must be like to experience the presence of God through the heavenly beatific vision.

“According to Boethius, love works like physics. It’s an elemental force. In fact, desire (eros) is an animating impulse that governs the entire universe, moving the sun and all the stars.

[. . .]

“God’s love is true love precisely because God knows we have the ability to spurn that love. Otherwise, grace changes from gift to entitlement. Love isn’t love until you give it away! This sort of love, in the final analysis, is the reason why a totally sufficient and perfect God would create something else and allow it to participate in him. If you find yourself suffering today – from end-of-semester stress, work problems, or anything else – try to remember that the source and summation of your created existence is to love. This love is necessarily a movement outside of self, a movement that ultimately affirms your identity in a new and revelatory reality. In this reality, ‘our image fuses/Into the circle and finds its place in it.'”   –Benjamin Winter, “The Love that Moves the Sun and the Other Stars,” Conciliar Post, April 17, 2015

“The Love That Moves The Sun And Stars” Blogpost (2018)

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“The following week, I’m reading the end of Dante’s Divine Comedy, when Dante ascends the final level of paradise, the Empyrean, and with help from the Blessed Mother, he is able to gaze directly at God.

“Dante is dumbstruck, unable to describe in language what he saw, save that it propelled him into writing down the Divine Comedy:

gustave-dore-vision-of-purgatory-and-paradise-by-dante-alighieri‘Here my high imagining failed of power,
but already my desire and my will were turned,
like a wheel being moved evenly,
by the Love that moves the sun and other stars.’

“God’s love moves the Sun and Stars, but most importantly it moves our hardened hearts, in spite of the million little ways we try to keep it at arm’s length.” [. . .]    –Michael J. Sanem, Incarnation is Everywhere, October 12, 2018.

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Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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