Sacred Verses Part Three

This is the third of four volumes of Sacred Verses. The entire work is an approximate modern adaptation of Dante's Divine Comedy. In the first volume a young man suffers a great loss in his life and in addition, the loss of innocence and certitude that is characteristic of youth. This leads him to seek meaning in the world and in his life, first by exploration of the physical world. In the second volume he travels through the philosophy of the centuries and the universe of ideas. In this volume (and in number four, yet to come), he explores the history of the spiritual world. In each of these journeys he has a mentor (for Dante these were Virgil and Beatrice). In this volume his mentor is Mother Teresa, who has said, "In the End we all are One."

Throughout these volumes, the young man ages as he seeks (and eventually finds) a resolution of his quest. The first part (or physical universe) is equivalent to Dante's Inferno, the second, concerned with the world of ideas, is intermediate as is the Purgatorio of Dante. This final quest, for spiritual understanding, may be thought of as comparable to Dante's Paradisio.