Translating Dante is not a matter of rendering words in one language for words in another language. Indeed, no act of translation is so direct or basic. But as with Dante’s Comedy when the style itself is part of the art – the sound of the thing, the movement, the embodiment – the translator needs to feel as much as think, relying on sense along with knowledge. Why? Because the hope of giving us – the readers of a translation – an encounter with the great good found in the art depends on the more holistic, more full-bodied work of scholarship and personality, at once.

Jason Baxter has studied Dante for years and written on him before, including with his marvelous and illuminating book, A Beginner’s Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Now he is completing the work of translating the master’s poem for English readers that brings us into not just what the poem says, but what it feels like.

Follow-up Resources:

• Inferno, A New Translation by Jason M. Baxter
• Purgatorio, A New Translation by Jason M. Baxter
• A Beginner’s Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy, by Jason M. Baxter
• Learn more about Dr. Baxter’s work at https://www.jasonmbaxter.com/

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

On our last episode, I welcomed two of our Sullivan Undergraduate Saints Fellows to talk about the pilgrimage through France that our cohort completed at the start of summer. The final destination on that pilgrimage was Lourdes. As follow up to that episode, I want to share with all of you a relatively short reflection on thirst. In particular, I want to talk about a pilgrim’s thirst. But in the end, I really want to talk about the waters of Lourdes.

Follow-up Resources:

• Read this episode in article form at OSV Magazine under “A thirsty American pilgrim drinks his fill at Lourdes” by Leonard J. DeLorenzo
• The Song of Bernadette, by Franz Wurfel
• Learn more about the Sullivan Undergraduate Saints Fellowship
• “Pilgrimage and the Urgent Question of Faith,” by Leonard J. DeLorenzo, essay in the Church Life Journal
• “A pilgrimage of sacred art,” by Leonard J. DeLorenzo, article in Our Sunday Visitor Newsweekly

“Encountering Christ on Pilgrimage, with Joan Watson,” podcast episode via Church Life Today

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Arising from the McGrath Institute for Church Life, the Sullivan Undergraduate Saints Fellowship forms Notre Dame students as leaders in the study and spirituality of the saints. We launched this fellowship in 2025 with an inaugural cohort of 12 students selected from a pool of many, many applicants. As part of their fellowship, our saints fellows completed a course this past semester (with yours truly) on praying with the saints. Next year they will become leaders of other undergraduate students, as they form groups of students who pray together and serve together in a manner common to a saint each fellow selects. But in between the course they complete and the year of leadership they undertake, the whole cohort of 12 fellows, along with me and a chaplain, make a pilgrimage to immerse ourselves in the cultures that gave rise to particular saints––cultures which, in turn, these saints renewed and enriched. This year’s pilgrimage was to France, specifically: Paris, Chartres, Lisieux, LeMans, Tours, and Lourdes.

Today, two of our Sullivan Undergraduate Saints Fellows join me to talk about the meaning and significance of this pilgrimage with the saints. Macy Vance is a rising junior and Kate Apelian is a rising senior at Notre Dame, but really I should let them introduce themselves.

Follow-up Resources:

• Learn more about the Sullivan Undergraduate Saints Fellowship
• Check out the wildly popular “Saturdays with the Saints” lecture series
• “Pilgrimage and the Urgent Question of Faith,” by Leonard J. DeLorenzo, essay in the Church Life Journal
• “A pilgrimage of sacred art,” by Leonard J. DeLorenzo, article in Our Sunday Visitor Newsweekly
• “Saints who flew, with Carlos Eire,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Encountering Christ on Pilgrimage, with Joan Watson,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Saints, for Real, with Meg Hunter-Kilmer,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “The Theology of the Saints, with Katie Cavadini and Leonard DeLorenzo,” podcast episode via Church Life Today

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.