"Dante, in his thirtieth canto of Paradise, compares the light of glory, with which it is given intelligent creatures to see openly the Creator, to a river of light that flows in an immense circle around the Most Blessed Trinity. Disposed in a gentle declivity are all of the souls of the Blessed, in more than a thousand circular steps ascending toward the center, whence all the splendor comes from the rays which God projects on that assembly of Blessed:
"Therefore, in the form of a candid rose
The blessed militia she pointed to me,
That Christ in His Blood did espouse. "
(Par. c. 31)
while the Angels flitted here and there alighting upon the petals of that enormous flower and from there reascended
"up there where His love sojourns forever"
as swarms of bees, that now alight on the flowers to extract the nectar and now return to the beehive.
In describing the loveliness of those Angels with face resplendent as a vivid flame, with golden wings and the rest of the body more candid than snow, the poet observes that, descending into the rose, they directed each Blessed coming up to the Fatherland to their proper place, allotting to each that measure of light and love that each had earned during life on this land of exile.
O beautiful Angels, assign also to us a place in that mystical rose when we shall land on the shores of the celestial bliss, so that, from one of its petals, immersing the pupil of our eyes in that river of light, we may satisfy this thirst of truth and love which in vain we now try to quench in earthly things."
--from Heaven: Where Love reigns by Sister Mary Raphael, D. S. P.
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