The Best Five Years

October 1, 2021 There was an interesting part in Canto Six of Dante’s Inferno which talked about how being whole transforms the way a person experiences emotions.  Dante writes, “He: “Turn to your philosophy again , // which shows that when a thing at last is whole // it feels more pleasure—so it feels more pain”” (Canto 6, Ln. 105-7).  This passage stuck out to me because it spoke to the idea that as a person gets  closer to wholeness, that person has the capacity to feel things deeper. I always thought that as a person became more whole, they would feel pleasure and love better, but it never struck me that the same would be true of the other e motions, specifically pain. I think it makes sense, though, that as a person is able to  understand and process what they are feeling, they will have the capacity to feel things stronger. It is a difficult passage to read, because it highlights the fact that just because  a person is more whole, it does not mean that they will have freedom from

September 23, 2021 Aquinas lays out a beautiful picture of love, and specifically of the way God loves. He writes, “To love someone is in fact to will good for them” ( 1, Q. 20, Art. 1 ).  This statement sums up the very essence of God, in that he has a divine will, and that will  is  intertwined thoroughly  with his love for us. There have been a lot of questions this week  stemming from my reading of Aquinas that confused me, specifically ho w  God predestines through his will . Some things that I came away with from that are the assurance that God is good and that his will is tied to his love.  As Aquinas says, “ We are induced to love by good which exists already... With God, it is the reverse. When God wills some good to one whom he loves, his will is the cause of this good being in him, rather than in any other”  (1, Q. 23, Art. 4).  T he key here is  understanding the difference in  the way God  loves because of  his innate  goodness   and  humans  l oving what they  see as good