Dante's Easter Journey
Part 1: Maunday Thursday: The Dark Wood and the Call to Begin Again. This is the first of 4 short reflections to end Holy week.
This is the first of four short reflections to cover Maunday Thursday to Easter Sunday in which we journey with Dante. The reflections and video were created by SJ Murray and her team at The Greats Story Lab. More information about them at the bottom of the page.
Part I: Maunday Thursday
The Dark Wood and the Call to Begin Again
Midway on the journey of life, Dante wakes up lost. Not metaphorically—really lost. He’s in a dark wood, has no idea how he got there, and realizes too late that he has strayed from the straight path. He’s alone, afraid, and hemmed in by the shadows. This is a literal, and spiritual, midlife crisis.
That’s how the Divine Comedy begins. It’s one of the greatest poems of all time. Dante wrote it in exile from his beloved city of Florence near the beginning of the fourteenth century. He got embroiled in politics, and that didn’t turn out very well for him. But in the opening of the Inferno, he focuses on a different kind of chaos in his life: he’s confused and afraid. He doesn’t see faith working in his life, and he needs one of his favourite celebrity authors—Virgil—to help get him back on track. Isn’t that how so many of our spiritual crises go in life? They begin in bewilderment and then God sends an unexpected guide in some way we could never have anticipated.
Holy Thursday reminds us of the night Jesus entered into his own dark wood: the Garden of Gethsemane. He knelt there in sorrow and asked, if it were possible, for the cup to pass. It’s a deeply human moment of pain and suffering—and that’s the point.
Grace doesn’t wait for us to be strong. It meets us in the shadows, when we’re at our most vulnerable.
It’s too simple to see Dante’s descent into Hell as a fall. It’s not: it’s a calling. His journey begins because Beatrice (whose name literally means Blessed and who reflects the power of Divine Love)sees him lost and sends Virgil to guide him. Heaven comes looking for Dante: it literally sends help. And this is the pattern of salvation: like the sheep who wanders off from the flock, we stray. And then, God’s love seeks us out. We get lost, and are found. No matter what happens, and whatever we do, love comes running for us.
The dark woods of life are never the end of the story. They’re thresholds to something more: the beginning of the way back to living our lives in the image of the God who created us. And here’s the great irony: even when we feel lost, and everything seems bleak, we’re still part of a greater journey. Dante’s confusion? It’s just a sign that he’s waking up again. And we can, too.
For me, Holy Thursday is a holy invitation to take a close look at where I am. Not where I pretend to be, or where I think I should be, but simply where I am. Because the journey to begin again starts exactly where we are—right here, right now—and with a willingness to surrender and be guided.
At The Greats Story Lab™, this is what we’re after: the wisdom that helps us live more meaningfully, more hopefully. The stories that offer us roadmaps for the soul and the long, slow walk home.
“Midway upon the journey of our lives, I found myself in a dark wood, where the true path had been lost to me.”
🎥 Video: Dante Minutes — Feeling Lost or Overwhelmed? Dante, Inferno 1 (part 1):
https://youtube.com/shorts/T6K1D6aJBxM
The Greats Story Lab was founded by SJ Murray, Ph.D. (Princeton), a Professor at Baylor University and EMMY®-nominated filmmaker, and Imagineer Courtney Becker. The Greats is about bringing the great literary works to the people once again, using film and other creative media. Not only have they worked on Dante but also on Boethius as well as shorter projects on Plato, Shakespeare and more. To a lot of people, reading the classics is a daunting thought, but in not engaging we miss out on contemplating the big questions of life that drove these writers, and form a back-drop to our daily lives. Additionally, we miss out on what has gone into the foundations and building of what one might call Western civilisation. Please go to their website here, or their youtube page here to learn more.