Father Wesley Walker

Welcome to The Classical Mind, a podcast about the great books in the Western canon.

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I'm Father Wesley Walker.

Gosh, the ocean one is great.

And I was thinking about how humbling it is to be in the ocean, you know, and how vast it is.

And you get that moment at the beginning of Canto 2 where he says, oh, you who are within your little bark, you know, so it does make us feel that way.

So that's a great one.

I do love the one also in Canto 2, the...

The force and motion of the holy spheres, which are so beautiful that they must be inspired by the blessed mover, just as a smith imparts the hammer's art.

I think that's just beautiful imagery.

We talked a lot about ordering in the Purgatorio episode.

And so you finally see that ordering on display in this beautiful ordered scene.

And there's this art to it, an aesthetic to it that's just overwhelmingly beautiful.

And so I think that was probably the one that stuck out to me this time around anyways.

One of my favorite parts that illustrates this is the two cantos where you have Dominic tell the story of Francis and then Bonaventure tell the story of Dominic.

Because, you know, those different orders in the Catholic Church, I get to hang out with them at Catholic University pretty often.

I call it a Catholic University Grand Slam if I see them.

uh dominicans uh franciscans benedictines and augustinians in the same day um that's that's a catholic university grand slam but you know they do function uh in some ways at least in an earthly sense almost like denominations with their own rivalries you know and and of course throughout the history of the church there have been power plays between the different orders you know for supremacy and um and so to have dominic the founder of the dominicans tell the story of francis and then bonaventure one of the greatest franciscans tell the story about dominic

Shows this great kind of mediation that's occurring, this great recognition of their parts in the larger scheme of the life of the church and an acceptance and celebration of that.

So it is a kind of harmony, again, that's playing out, and I just love that so much.