Canto 33 / 33

Paradiso

Canto XXXIII

Prayer to the Virgin. The Beatific Vision. The Threefold Circle of the Trinity. Mystery of the Divine and Human Nature.

You are the Virgin Mother, daughter of your own Son,

humble and exalted beyond every other creature,

the destined goal of God's eternal plan.

You are the one who so ennobled human nature

that its Creator did not disdain

to become what He had made.

In your womb was rekindled the love

whose warmth allowed this flower

to bloom in eternal peace.

Here you are for us the noonday torch

of charity, and below among mortals

you are the living fountain of hope.

Lady, you are so great and so powerful

that whoever seeks grace without turning to you

tries to make his desire fly without wings.

**Canto XXXIII: The Vision of God**

You gave such nobility to human nature

that its Creator did not disdain

to make himself its creature.

Within your womb was rekindled the love

by whose warmth, in the eternal peace,

this flower has bloomed.

Here you are our blazing torch of charity,

and below among mortals

you are the living wellspring of hope.

Lady, you are so great and powerful

that whoever desires grace but does not turn to you

tries to make his longings fly without wings.

Your kindness not only helps

those who ask for it,

but often runs ahead of the asking itself.

In you is compassion, in you is mercy,

in you magnificence—in you is gathered

whatever goodness exists in any creature.

Now this man, who from the deepest pit

of the universe to here has witnessed

the spiritual lives one by one,

begs you for grace to gain such power

that he may lift his eyes still higher

toward the ultimate salvation.

And I, who never burned more for my own vision

than I do for his, offer you all my prayers—

and pray they prove sufficient—

that you would scatter from him every cloud

of mortality with your prayers,

so that the Supreme Joy might be revealed to him.

I pray further, Queen, you who can do

whatever you will, that you preserve

his heart's devotion after so great a vision.

Let your protection overcome human frailty.

See how Beatrice and all the blessed ones

clasp their hands together, joining my prayers to you!

The eyes beloved and revered by God,

fixed upon the one who spoke,

showed us how welcome devout prayers are to her.

Then they turned toward the Eternal Light—

that Light on which no creature

could believably focus such a clear gaze.

And I, who was approaching

the end of all desires,

felt the fire of longing within me reach its peak, as it should.

Bernard smiled and gestured for me to look upward,

but I was already doing

exactly what he wanted,

because my sight, becoming purified,

was entering deeper and deeper

into the ray of that High Light which is truth itself.

From that moment on, what I saw

was greater than our language can express—

speech fails before such vision,

and memory surrenders to such overwhelming experience.

Like someone who sees something in a dream,

and after waking the feeling remains

but nothing else returns to mind,

so am I now—my vision has almost entirely

faded away, yet still distilling

in my heart is the sweetness born from it.

So snow melts under the sun's touch,

so the Sibyl's prophecies written on light leaves

were lost upon the wind.

O Supreme Light, you who rise so far

above mortal understanding,

lend back to my mind a little of what you appeared to be,

and give my tongue such power

that it might leave just one spark of your glory

for future generations.

By returning somewhat to my memory

and sounding even faintly in these verses,

more of your victory will be grasped.

I believe the intensity of the living ray

I endured would have overwhelmed me

if I had turned my eyes away from it.

I remember I grew bolder

because of this, so much that I joined

my gaze with the Infinite Glory.

O abundant grace, through which I dared

to fix my sight upon the Eternal Light

until my vision was consumed in it!

In its depths I saw gathered together,

bound by love into a single volume,

everything that is scattered in pages throughout the universe—

substance and accidents and their workings,

all fused together in such a way

that what I'm describing is one simple light.

I believe I saw the universal form

of this great knot,

because as I say this I feel my joy expand.

A single moment brings me more forgetfulness

than twenty-five centuries brought to the voyage

that made Neptune marvel at the Argo's shadow.

My mind, completely suspended this way,

gazed steadfast, motionless, attentive,

and grew more inflamed the more it watched.

In the presence of that light, one becomes such

that it's impossible to ever consent

to turn away from it toward any other sight,

because the good that is the object of the will

is gathered completely there,

and outside it, what is perfect there becomes defective.

My words will fall shorter now

in describing what I still remember

than an infant's whose tongue still seeks the breast.

Not because the living light I gazed upon

contained more than one pure image—

it is always what it was before—

but because my sight grew stronger

by looking, that one appearance

kept transforming as I myself changed.

Within the deep, luminous substance

of the High Light, three circles appeared to me

of three colors but one size,

and one seemed reflected by the second

like rainbow reflected in rainbow,

and the third seemed fire breathed equally from both.

How feeble all speech is, how it falls short

of my conception! And compared to what I saw,

calling this inadequate is not enough.

O Eternal Light, existing in yourself alone,

alone understanding yourself, and understood

by yourself and understanding, you love and smile upon yourself!

That circle which appeared in you

as reflected light,

when my eyes contemplated it awhile,

seemed painted within itself, in its own color,

with our human image—

and so my sight was completely absorbed in it.

Like a mathematician struggling

to square the circle, who cannot discover

through thought the principle he needs,

so was I faced with that new vision.

I wanted to see how the image fit the circle,

how it found its place there,

but my own wings were not sufficient for this—

except that then my mind was struck

by a flash of lightning that fulfilled its wish.

Here my high imagination lost its power,

but already my desire and will were turning,

like a wheel that spins with perfect balance,

moved by the Love that moves the sun and all the stars.