In the Seventh Circle of Hell, in Dante’s Inferno, in the circle of violence, is a rockslide, rubble as from an earthquake. It wasn’t always ruinous like this, this part of hell. It’s new, Virgil tells Dante; it wasn’t there the last time he came through. Earlier, Virgil had talked about it, the moment hell shook. He was in Limbo: “I was new to this condition,” he said, “when I saw a mighty one descend, crowned, with the sign of victory.” But he didn’t know his name; he didn’t understand.

But you do. You know his name. And you understand.

It’s something I’ve never forgotten—the rubble of hell, and that Virgil, the pagan, the poet, didn’t understand; that he saw him but didn’t know his name. But you do. You know his name. And you understand. It is what we celebrate tonight, by the light which has broken our darkness. Lumen Christi we sing; thanks be to God. Virgil has all reason, all culture, all poetry; in Dante’s mythology, at least, he shares the Limbus Patrum with Plato and Aristotle and other great lights; but he didn’t know who it was who broke into hell, crowned with the sign of victory. He didn’t know his name. But you do.

But, of course, Dante was just beginning his spiritual journey. His was a midlife crisis, of sorts. He began writing the Divine Comedy just after he turned 40, which is probably why it speaks to me so much. “Midway in the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood…lost,” the great poem begins. You and I, here this Easter night: we still have our journeys to make. Some of us have a long way to go yet. This is not heaven; it’s a symbol. The signs of God’s victory, the grotesque rubble of sin and violence—dangerous where you step like the aftermath of something bombed— makes the Christian walk a strange one. John Bunyan in The Pilgrim’s Progress called it “the wilderness of this world.” After this, you will keep walking, and so will I. Through the rest of your hell, your purgatory, your paradise—and as Wendell Berry once put it, “not always in that order”—you will walk sometimes in darkness and sometimes in light. The path will twist sometimes; it will be a frightening sometimes. But you know his name. You understand. And now your path is not meaningless. Because now you are a pilgrim.

In Cairo, Egypt all the garbage collectors are Christians. They’re called the Zabbaleen—the word means literally, “garbage people.” They live in what’s called “Garbage City” at the bottom a mountain in Cairo; I’ve been there. It’s the filthiest place I’ve ever been in my life. Walking through Garbage City, once one adapts to the stench of the place, you notice here and there Christian images—a picture of Jesus here, an icon of Mary there, and crosses everywhere. Above the city, carved into the mountain is their church—where they go to God and where God comes to them. Trash in piles line every street of the city; when the trash collector comes home from his route, he brings the trash into his home so the rest of the family can sort through it, salvaging whatever is good, whatever is usable. From the garbage of the whole of the city, they find what shouldn’t have been thrown away. They find what’s redeemable.

You know his name. You understand. Your presence here—unless you are false—testifies that you know his name, that you do indeed understand. As we used to say, you are illumined. But your journey is not over; like Dante, like me, like Mary Magdalene and the disciples, like your brothers and sisters, the Christians of Garbage City, your journey is just beginning. But now you know his name. You understand. You see what you didn’t at first. You can find what’s redeemable from among the filth of the world. Which is your task now that you’ve become Christians, that you’ve become the soul of the world. Because you’ve risen with him, whom not everyone knows.

But you do. Which is your salvation. Amen.

To listen to the audio of this homily, click here.