While reading at my son’s baseball game this week, a mom from our school approached me and asked if I was reading Dante. I wasn’t, but our sons are both reading Divine Comedy in their sophomore literature class, so it was a reasonable question. What unfolded was a quick conversation about the value of reading The Divine Comedy even though we have to work at it.

I found myself explaining to her that one of the big ideas in The Comedy, that even teenagers are capable of grasping, is that human beings have souls, for which they are responsible. Even teenaged-souls require attention, and teenagers must attend to them. From Inferno, and very relevant to a teenager, surfaces the cruel reality that with eternal consequences, men and women become what they love…they become what they behold.

The Comedy is not just a book about hell. Nor is it a Catholic book that Protestants can avoid reading for doctrinal differences regarding purgatory. The Comedy teaches us that we are all on a pilgrimage. We are all going somewhere. We are all becoming something. That’s a truth every adult and teenager should confront.

Teenagers are beginning to understand that not all parents are like their parents. Some parents are better than others, which means by inference if not by direct application, that they may not be as good as they have always thought themselves to be. Teenagers are beginning to realize where they fit in the world and what they can and cannot do to change that.

Dante travels through the underworld and sees countless souls who have finally arrived exactly where they were going while on earth. The precise nature of their eternal punishment makes this connection very clear to the reader. Their loves have fitted their souls for a particular form of eternity. As teachers, and I would argue as parents, we need to use this great book to pull back the curtain between the temporal and the eternal showing our students that the two are much closer to one another than we often apprehend.

As a teacher, I always read the book I am teaching with my students. As a parent, I try to read what my children are reading in school. And as both, I try to bring the great books with me wherever I go because conversations about Dante at the baseball diamond count for eternity.

If you have never read The Comedy, now is the time. Join the largest Dante reading group on the Internet.

Mandi Gerth serves alongside a dedicated team of classical educators at Coram Deo Academy in Dallas, Texas, where she currently teaches fourth grade. She and her husband have labored for over twenty years to build a family culture for their five children that values books, baseball, museums, home-cooked meals, and conversation about ideas.