Dante's Journey 3: Flight Log to the Highest Heaven

As Pagan poetics can take one only so far, there has been a changing of the guard: Beatrice, in the Garden of Eden, replaced Virgil as Dante’s guide for the final leg of his journey. The lovers, reunited, soar weightlessly into the Medieval Heavens, through the planetary spheres and the fixed stars, beyond the limits of time and space, into the dwelling place of God, the Emphyrean, the Heaven of Fire. Along the way, the lovers stop to interview blessed citizens of the Heavenly Utopia, meeting friends and notables, apostles and martyrs and, finally, in their place Our Lady and God himself. Paradiso is Dante’s last poem and, by general agreement, his most beautiful. It is also his most difficult and even he warns us not to follow if we are not up to the journey. Luckily Fr. Woods is available to keep us on track as we soar through the laneless realm of the sky.