Today we ventured into the Cornice of the Slothful in Dante’s Purgatory. (As a public service announcement, I do not believe in Purgatory, but I do believe that God uses suffering to form us into the people that He is calling us to be right now, on earth, today… sometimes I wish that He did not use this method, but I have to admit from my own experience that it is mainly how I have learned.)

Today, as we were considering the Slothful in Omnibus, I brought out two things: one that I speak of every year; and another that was brand new this year. First, we think of sloth as laziness. This is not what Dante means. He means acedia which is the result not of a desire for pleasure, but instead is the result of a lack of faith in God. The slothful will not get out of bed because he does not believe that God will do what He has promised. He points to the negative example of the Israelites in the wilderness. They had God’s promise and they saw that the Land was good, but when they saw the inhabitants of the land, they did not have faith. God gave them the suffering in the wilderness—only two adults that crossed the Red Sea also crossed the Jordan. I bring this out every year.

New this year, I saw the connection between the homosexuals in canto 15 of Inferno and the slothful in canto 17 of Purgatory. Both fail to trust God. The homosexuals because they will not use their to be faithful and multiply. The slothful will not do anything because they believe that God will be bless their work. Both are running. The homosexuals run staring at their own bodies eternally confronted with the fact of God’s intent for the body. The slothful run to practice the virtue that they lack in faith that God will give them their desire and make them into the image of Christ.