An angel's light strikes Dante's eyes, blinding him briefly — the Angel of Generosity erases another P and they mount to the third terrace. On the way, Dante presses Virgil with his question from Canto XIV: why do souls here forbid the sharing of goods? Virgil offers the key philosophical distinction of the Purgatorio's middle section. Material goods are finite — if you have more of something, I have less. But spiritual goods — love, wisdom, virtue, joy — are the opposite: the more they are shared, the more they increase. Heaven's joy is not diminished because many share it; it is multiplied. Envy's foundational error is applying the logic of scarcity to a domain of superabundance. To love God is to enter an economy where desire is never zero-sum.
On the third terrace, moving through smoke (which will choke the canto to come), Dante suddenly experiences vivid waking visions — a new device Dante introduces here. First he sees Mary at the Temple finding the twelve-year-old Jesus, gently reproaching him: "Son, why have you done this to us?" — her tone loving, not angry. Then a vision of a crowd about to stone a young man, who prays for his killers — Stephen the proto-martyr. Both images are of meekness under provocation, of the refusal to return violence with violence. The contrast with what is being purged on this terrace is exact: these souls once met injury with rage; the medicine is repeated contemplation of its opposite.