THE title of this book comes from the very end of the Commedia, Dante’s huge poem of pilgrimage through the levels of hell, the verdant ascent of Mount Purgatory, into the courts of heaven, where at last the poet beholds the persons of the divine Trinity, ceaselessly moving in the dance of love, adoration, and creativity. At this sight, the poem ends — or, rather, collapses — as language is rendered inadequate at the vision of God.
Dante’s world is not ours, but the things that he talks about most certainly are. Mortality, judgement, damnation, bliss: we dress these words up in other clothing, but they lurk below the surface of so much human thought in this and every age. Indeed, one of the many problems for the Church in our times is the success with which so much Christian vocabulary has become embedded in our culture, but without the teaching behind it.
I suppose that is in no small part what Paul Dominiak is trying to address in this book. Intending it as a book for Advent, he takes the old Sunday themes for that season (heaven, hell, death, and judgement) and reclaims their biblical meanings, restoring them through a Christian lens of hope and expectation. Properly understood, they are means by which the believer can develop what the author calls an “apocalyptic imagination”. That is to say, we and the world around us are called to judgement and transformation in, and of, the here-and-now.
Part of taking the incarnation seriously (a large part of what Advent is for) involves understanding that concepts of judgement and so on are not things hidden in the future, but ideas that break into the present and that the Christian imagination must bring to bear on the issues of our time. Each chapter of the book tries to illustrate this by highlighting present issues in our world, such as creation, populism, and so on. Questions for reflection at the end provide food for individual or group use.
Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, not just because of what it is, but because of what it might be. Dominiak wants us to take the “last things” seriously, not just for what they promise in the future, but also for what they call us to now.
The Revd Peter McGeary is the Vicar of St Mary’s, Cable Street, and a Priest-Vicar of Westminster Abbey.
The Love That Moves the Sun: Advent hope in a time of crisis
Paul Dominiak
Canterbury Press £12.99
(978-1-78622-565-8)
Church Times Bookshop £10.39