The Glories of Heaven

“And yet the visible sun, as splendid as it is, is a mere created object, and is therefore certainly less radiant than the divine splendor, and less beautiful than the glory of the God Who fashioned it. It consequently follows that the bodies of the saints—suffused with this glory of God—will surpass the beauty and radiance of the sun itself.”

—Saint Anselm

The great Doctor of the Church and Benedictine monk Saint Anselm has assembled one of the greatest books ever written on heaven. Relying on his profound insights from prayer and his deep love for Sacred Scripture, Anselm systematically describes various aspects of the happiness of heaven: the beauty of the bodies of the blessed, the velocity of the glorified bodies of the saints in heaven, the strength of the blessed, the pleasures of heaven, and much more. At the same time, Saint Anselm does not shy away from the reality of hell and its unending torments. Nothing spurs the soul to repentance like the thought of being eternally separated from God.

To obtain our celestial homeland, Saint Anselm instructs the reader to meditate daily on the day of judgment and the blessings of heaven. Saint Anselm, who later became an archbishop of Canterbury, exhorts the faithful to daily conversion and heartfelt prayers. It is a book that will make you long for heaven with all your heart and slowly detach you from this world, where “the pleasures, joys, and honors of this mortal life are but brief and ephemeral.”