The following reflection is by attendee Tony Melton.
Together this week, we exercised our vision of the Good. Without the communion of these beautiful souls, I could not have beheld the goodness of the Aeneid. By dancing on the surface of the story and digging deep into its themes and motifs, we unearthed the logos of this book, the unifying soul of a book that reveals to us so much of ourselves and the Logos, Jesus Christ.
In the Aeneid, that logos was Roma. Ancient Rome, though not the City of God, has so much to teach us. Aeneas’ vocation to found Rome sanctified me. He convicted me with his love of father, son, country, descendants, his commitment to destiny that motivated him to forego family, forsake convenient homes and the security of the land for the chaos of the sea, and even descend into the underworld. In all this, Aeneas is an icon of Jesus, who endured this and much more to found the true eternal kingdom. He and Christ challenge me. Aeneas negates my culture, which values pleasure over destiny, present over future, and authenticity over piety. We, too, pilgrim toward a promised land, and we withstand an enemy far worse than Juno. What must we forsake in order to reach our Latium?
-Rev. Dcn. Tony Melton
