Spiritual Direction From Dante: Ascending Mount Purgatory

Spiritual Direction from Dante #2

by Paul A. Pearson

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. Learn how and why:
Dante's presentation of Purgatory is something beautifully hopeful.
Freedom is the dominant theme here and the rejoicing of captives delivered from their prisons the dominant tone. 
Purgatory is filled with good people, people well on their way to becoming saints. They are increasingly concerned for one another and generous, the more so the higher on the mountain they climb. They are interested in one another's well-being and rejoice in one another's victories as though they were their own.
The sufferings on Mount Purgatory are not something that happens to the souls there; they happen for them. This has all been designed for their benefit, and they are grateful to God for making it possible. 
Purgatory is God's merciful plan for allowing us to rediscover the joy and freedom of being human, the joy for which we were created but which sin has smothered and distorted.
This is what we can be. This is what we can begin to be, even now, if only we will separate ourselves from sin. What are we waiting for? Join Father Pearson in Ascending Mount Purgatory.
 

416 pages, Hardcover

Published July 14, 2020

About the author

Father Paul Pearson converted to Catholicism during his university days, entered the Toronto Oratory in 1985, was ordained to the priesthood in 1989, and began serving as Dean of Saint Philip’s, the seminary run by the Oratorians, in 1990. That same year, in response to requests from seminarians, he began to offer seminars on Dante's Inferno. His series of books has been written so that a wider audience may benefit from “spiritual direction from Dante.”

Reviews

[Bennett Schurr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book

[Tara Boothby]

a must read for Dante enthusiasts