The year is 1300 and Dante Aligheri is lost in a dark wood with no plan, not even a clue. But Heaven conspires and brings him a guide, the Roman epic poet, Virgil. Together, they begin the most arduous leg of Dante's journey to salvation: the journey through Hell. The poem is part travelogue, part cautionary tale, a Medieval catalogue of every possible way one could lose one humanity, but is neither gratuitous nor penny-dreadful: it is a necessary part of Dante's education. The road is long and hard and we are lucky to have Fr. Woods with us on the road, to lead us as Virgil leads Dante, pointing out the sights and providing the background we need to understand a journey that is not limited to the Middle Ages, but is the journey of every Christian soul to God.

T. S. Eliot had moved on to Drama and was uncertain whether he would ever write poetry again, but some lines he had cut from his first play, Murder in the Cathedral, stuck in his imagination. They became seeds. And, in the tumult preceding the Second World War, the seeds began to sprout. This was the genesis of Eliot's final suite of poems, the Four Quartets. Each poem saw separate publication before they were bound together into a single unit. There are four poems: one for each of the base elements of physical reality air, earth, water and fire. Each poem is connected to a place the poet revisits in memory: Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvage and Little Gidding . As a whole it constitutes a brilliant meditation on time, eternity and those timeless moments when the two intersect. Eliot is a notoriously difficult poet, known for his wide allusions to the entire of the European poetic canon. In this poem he also alludes to the ancient scriptures of India. Luckily, Father Woods is available as tour guide, to lead you profitably through this literary adventure.

Socrates goes by night to a party given by the tragic poet Agathon. On there, a discussion breaks out on the nature of romantic love which issues in a competition of speeches in praise of love. Behind it all, putting the strings of this shadow play, is Plato. He was too young to have attended the event, so, what is his interest in telling its story? And how, moreover, is philosophy related to romantic love. In writing his great "dialogue," Symposium proved that a book of philosophy could also be a work of art. Here we attempt to disentangle this great and beautiful work and find the meaning in Plato's art.

The chief problem with Purgatorio is Inferno. Dante wanted to write a universal epic, like Homer's or Virgil's, but the botched and blighted souls he met in Hell were of no use. They could care less about the truth. So, in the second stage of his epic, Dante must play catch up. This he does brilliantly in the one of the most insightful depictions of the developmental psychology of sainthood since St. John Climacus. The Holy Mountain is Hell in reverse, allowing Dante to develop a system by which virtues are inculcated in the soul. The seven deadly sins are undone and the pilgrimage ends with a return to innocence (the Garden of Eden) where sacred rivers erase the pilgrim's memories of their sins and enhance their memories of good deeds. But all this brilliance comes at a cost. Unlike, Inferno, which was all downhill, Purgatorio can be an uphill battle. Luckily, Fr. Woods is available as tour guide, to explain abstruse Medieval terminology and concepts (there are some) and to point out the many spectacular views along the way.