Student Puts Me in Dante’s Inferno
For the sin of gluttony
Perhaps the strangest insult I have ever received from a student was to be sentenced to Circle 3 in Dante’s Inferno — for the sin of Gluttony. The opening sentence of his essay read: “I place Professor Watney in Circle 3 for Gluttony of his students’ time.” I was stunned. But perhaps I should explain the assignment:
Choose three contemporary sinners and place them in three separate circles in The Inferno. Explain how their crime becomes their own punishment — the logic of Hell, which Dante called the contrapasso.
My first response was to laugh. Clever! I thought. He has discovered that I am time-challenged and disorganized and has creatively found a way to get back at me. But then the gravity — and perhaps even the cruelty of what he had done — sank in, and a slow tide of depression crept over me. (I even began briefly browsing through teacher openings in the local state penitentiary).
But my wife reminded me of the common burden of professors and pastors who suffer the slings and arrows of their students’ or parishioners’ angst. And I remembered too the words of my old priest as he invited me into his office for the first time to say Confession. After a few minutes of light banter, he said to me:
Mark, I am now going to put on my priestly robe. And once I do, I will no longer be Father Guy, but a priestly conduit. I will hear your confession, and I will offer it on your behalf to God, but I will not remember a word you said to me once I remove these robes. And when I greet you tomorrow, do not expect me to remember what you said — or even to ask you about it.
I still remember the incredible freedom this gave me to confess to him at a far deeper level than I was planning to — knowing that he could never use what I said against me.
And It made me yearn to be a Priest — where robes are placed over personalities, and pastors become conduits, getting themselves out of the way as they bring their parishioners before God. And dispensing wisdom and grace — not grades! — to those who may deserve it least. Something I could never do as a professor. And so I prayed:
Oh Lord, can I too
place robes over myself
to hide myself when I teach?
And then I remembered the words of a struggling priest (and professor) named Thomas Merton:
Above all, we must learn our own weakness in order to waken to a new order of action and being — and experience God Himself accomplishing in us the things we find impossible.
And finding within myself the Grace to be objective, I reluctantly placed a “B+” on my tormentor’s perceptive paper.
