What is the meaning of this symbolic procession so common to Dante's day, so alien to ours? We have already said that it is a dramatic representation of the human race finding happiness, finding its Eden in its membership in the Church. But it, also, is a symbolic lesson for the individual. Dante, the type of humanity having done penance for his sins, is about to be received through the sacrament of penance into the soul of the Church i.e. into the full communion of grace. It is fitting, therefore, that the Church should advance to meet him, the repentant sinner, and should reveal itself to him before receiving him into its bosom. If objection be made that Dante already has been absolved from sin and in Purgatory has made expiation for his offences, the answer is given by Ozanam; "At the term of the expiatory course, as at its beginning, to quit it as well as to enter upon it, we must render submission to a religious authority and fulfill the conditions without which God does not treat with us--confession for oblivion, fears for consolation and shame for definitive rehabilitation." When the pageant comes to a halt the participants group themselves about the Griffin and the Chariot, by that act declaring that the goal and object of their desires are centered in Christ and His Church. Then one of the company by divine command calls aloud three times to a heavenly being, the spouse of the Church, to appear and the cry is repeated by the whole company. From the Chariot arise, as will arise the dead from their graves, a hundred angels scattering flowers over and around the Chariot and also raising their voices in the call for the Heavenly Bride. They first sing the words of the Canticle of Palm Sunday. _Benedictus qui venis_ (Blessed art thou who comest) and then the beautiful line from the Aeneid: _Manibus o date lilia plenis_ (Oh! give lilies with full hands). Then comes from the clouds through the midst of the flowers showering down again within and without the Chariot, arrayed in the colors of the three theological virtues, the object of the invocation. "Crowned with olive over a white veil a Lady appeared to me, vestured in hue of living flame under a green mantle." It is Beatrice, Dante's beloved, now apotheosized in the personification of Revelation. What other poet ever dreamed of so glorifying his beloved that for her coming the natural virtues prepare the way, the supernatural virtues, as handmaids accompany her to assist us to the understanding of her doctrine, the angels sing her laudation and she herself in the role both of unveiler of the Scriptures of the Prophets and the Apostles and the mystical Bride of the Canticles is worthy to be called "O Light, O Glory of the human race?" Dante before seeing her face, recognizes her by some mysterious instinct of love, recognizes her after a lapse according to fiction of ten years, but in reality of twenty-four years since her death.