So we'll have five conferences over the course of the weekend, and so let's just begin with the first.

So we proceed at pace.

The theme for the conference is death as Exodus in the purgatorio.

So we'll do a kind of basic or rudimentary sketch of the summa, and then we'll talk about Dante

and Aquinas.

And then the main point will be to describe death as a return, specifically as it is outlined

in purgatorio, Cantos 1 and 2.

We reading the catechism of the Catholic Church, it is in regard to death that man's condition

is most shrouded in doubt.

We might say that death is that most mysterious of human experiences, a kind of liminal experience. At the separation of body and soul,

St. Thomas Aquinas says one ceases to be a human person. One is a subsistent human soul.

And so, at the edge, at the fringe, there is much to be considered, much that is

mysterious. And at the heart of death, there are a whole lot of paradoxes. First, death is at once

natural and unnatural, natural in sense that we have corporeal bodies which change and decay.

By virtue of the fact that elements

are opposed, we are bound for dissolution. And yet unnatural, for we have aspirations for eternity

and totality, and death was never intended as part of God's original plan. Second paradox.

Death is at once a curse and a blessing.

We are told that it is a punishment for are not the wages of sin death.

And yet, in the Christian dispensation, many speak of death as an object of desire.

St. Paul writes, my desire is to depart and to be with Christ.

St. Ignatius writes, let me receive pure light.

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