Canto V. The poets next meet a group of the unshriven. They died repentant but without the sacrament of confession, not because of indolence, but because of unexpected violent death. Their prayer is the Miserere. Some of them explain their stories to Dante. All are eager that he ask their friends and family to pray for them.

Reconciliation with God, restoration to the community of the Church, depends on grace which gives us the gift of contrition and so a whole-hearted repentance. For these souls such contrition has secured their salvation. The delay in their progress through Purgatory follows from the lack of full reconciliation to the Church by the sacrament. These early cantos all emphasize the importance of the community. The souls are acutely aware of how they can benefit from the prayers of those behind them, for example. The sacrament of reconciliation is of such great importance not because it is the only possible means of repentance and forgiveness, as the stories of these souls show, but because it is the means that fully restores our communion with the Church. Peter Cornwell, formerly an Anglican minister, used an image for sacraments that I find helpful. They are, he said, like pipes that carry the water of God’s grace to where they are needed. Pipes may be work-a-day products of the plumbers trade, but we depend on them. They are God’s ordained means of grace, and so we should make use of them. God might be able miraculously to supply water to those in the desert, but that is no reason for us to be disdainful of the pipes laid on to supply most of us with the grace we need in our day-to-day circumstances.