Paradiso, Canto 28 with Dr. Courtney Barajas 

Thanks for your humble, yet profound explanation of Canto XXVIII.

Dr. Barajas, thank-you for a delightful and encouraging treatment of this canto. Theology is a realm of paradoxes that both hold and release God's truth. It is vital at this moment in history to embrace the profound mysteries of God's being and of His Creation. I sat enthralled as I watched your presentation, realizing the challenge of your task.

Brilliant commentary. Thank you so very much.

That was a refreshingly innovative approach to this Canto, Dr. Barajas. Your decision to confess your confusion with the complicated imagery Dante uses here, and to argue that sometimes it is okay not to understand everything, know everything, is something many academics much older than you would have avoided altogether. Many times academics have learned early in their careers that they must always be the expert and speak in the authoritative tone no matter who their audience is. You chose a more human, or perhaps humane, method. This has been a wonderful experience, but for me at least, it has started to feel like a struggle with the treatment of history, philosophy, astronomy, geography, and complicated imagery meaning that each Canto presents new, unexplored intellectual areas for the reader to grapple with. Your central point that it is okay sometimes to just sit and be comfortable in not knowing everything gives readers like me a chance to say if Pope Gregory the Great could laugh at what he got wrong, I guess I could lighten up just a little. Beautifully done, Dr. Barajas, and nicely presented!4

Thank you, Dr. Courtney Barajas, for aiding us in our attempt to grasp these abstract and complex images in Canto XXVIII. Truth like a gentle breeze may have come to the Pilgrim, but I imagine the Poet's readers are stretched in their mental capacities after grappling with this dense Canto. Dense it may be, but greatly rewarding for those who keep pondering it. The rings of Heaven get bigger as they near God, yet the rings of Angelic Hierarchy get visibly smaller? I can only imagine this image as a perpetually double-state vision of an expanse that extends in rings to the outer infinite realm of God but that also is folded in an inverted way where God is also the infinitesimal Point in the center that holds all in place. All of Him is blinding, however, and the image is swirling with movement and song and light. Incomprehensibility humbles my mind and draws my heart upward. I love this Canto, and I expect to grow in this love as I continue to ponder the heights of Heaven and the Hierarchy that draws close to Him. Grace and love draw close to the One, the Point, the Blinding Center of Beauty. Hierarchy is not fashionable in our modern age, yet here it is in full brilliance. The corruption of Church and worldly hierarchies is contrasted with this end and, I believe, redeemed. We must know these hierarchies in reference of that Hierarchy above. How can we correctly order our hierarchies by analogy with the Angelic one without destroying them or idolatrizing them? An age old problem, I suppose. Let us laugh at our mistakes and seek the Joy above! Thank you!

Thank you so much for your guidance, Dr. Barajas! This was such a complex canto, and I feel more able to dwell in its complexity with your helpful explanation.

Thank you, Dr. Barajas, for your honesty and humility, and your heartfelt presentation that for me was one of the best yet.

Excellent.

Wow. You're the best, comfortable and articulate about confusion. Thank you for helping me understand the tangle offered here.

Very beautiful presentation. Thank you, Dr Barajas.

Canto 28: The universe consists of action and matter, spiritual and physical, heaven and earth, or in modern metaphor: energy and mass! Beatrice, the source of Dante’s revelations, has “imparadised” his mind, which allows him to behold the form of paradise, the circumference of the physical universe bounded by God, and to directly behold the glory of the heavens, the center of the spiritual universe where God is the focus. Dante envisions a point, a scintilla, a geometrical symbol without dimension. A dimensionless point, one without width, length or height, exists but cannot be seen, just as God exists and cannot be seen by physical senses. Dante envisions a non-turning point of intense illumination, with its “ubiness,” its wheness-and-whereness that is everwhere-and-everywhen! The spheres through which Dante and Beatrice have passed exhibited the usual property of motion: the outer spheres, having a greater “distance” to travel in a revolution, move faster than the inner spheres. Now, Dante envisions nine, brilliant halos moving around the motionless point in such a fashion that the inner halos move faster than the outer rings! The spiritual motion of the Empyrean counterbalances the physical motion of the celestial spheres. The motionless point is the Intelligence of God, which is in contact with a Trinitarian Triad of halos of angelic hosts. The first Triad, “seeing” God most closely, consists of Seraphim and Cherubim, i.e., Love and Knowledge, under the influence of the Thrones which unite them! The second Triad, comprised of Dominions, Virtues and Powers, provides the hymn of praise surrounding the first angelic Triad. The third Triad of Principalities, Archangels and Angels incorporates the more "earthy" angels, those who interact directly as God's "messengers" throughout "salvation history.” Long before Einstein, Dante had a concept of Energy and Mass being united with the speed of Light!

Nice! The video ends on the 9th🤣And no I'm not related to her! That light is interesting. I have mentioned before about seeing such light in my Beethoven singing performance 😇👍

It is a sort of non euclidean picture ...