I once became acquainted with a lady who was strongly attracted to the beauty of the Church, but refused the grace of Christ.  Her previous job had been teaching at a Catholic university, where she had conversed with theological friends and come to love Dante’s Comedy.  Apparently with some encouragement from them, she had conceived the aspiration to be considered a “virtuous pagan,” like those whom the great poet depicted in the fourth canto of his Inferno.  This gave her hope.

It was a strange hope, for Dante’s virtuous pagans admit “we are all lost, and suffer only this:  Hopeless, we live forever in desire.”  So although they suffered no punishment beyond separation from God, nevertheless they suffered separation from God; though Dante put them only in a sort of annex of hell, it was still hell.

Besides, what the Church has actually taught is that perhaps the so-called virtuous pagans can be reconciled with God through Christ, but only if they accept whatever grace has actually been offered to them -- even if it falls short of the explicit knowledge of Him.  My friend’s first difficulty was not accepting it, for she knew she had been offered His grace.  Her second difficulty was presumption.  She was a charming person, and I was not privy to whatever faults she may have had.  But she was a little too confident that she was, in fact, virtuous – and a little too sure that her ignorance was invincible.

One thinks of the psalmist, who prayed in heartbroken humility, “Who can discern his errors?  Clear thou me from hidden faults.”  The latter sentence implores God to save him from the deceits by which he hides his transgressions from himself.  Without it, the former could be taken in a self-excusing way:  “How can I be blamed for what I don’t know for sure?”

Coming to himself in the Dark Wood, Dante writes,

How I had entered, I can’t bring to mind

I was so full of sleep just at that point

When I first left the way of truth behind.

How common is this state of mind:  To loiter at the gates of Paradise, and yet for any of a hundred reasons – whether sloth, scrupulosity, or the sheer pleasure of drifting in doubt -- decline to enter in.  Eventually it becomes a fixed habit.  I spent a great deal of my young life at it, and I could so easily have spent forever.

And ever.

Imagine knowing, for always and always, that by one small step you could have passed through those gates -- but you didn’t.

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(Quoting from the Esolen translation.)