 Welcome to The Spiritual Masters, a podcast from Tan Books and Tan Direction in which we look at the greatest and holiest writers from Catholic history. Join us as we explore the life and times in which they lived, an overview and study of their greatest works and how we as Catholics can look to these masters as models for our own holiness on our journey to heaven. Welcome back Tan fans and Father Robert Nixon to another episode in our mini-series on the Spiritual Master of Saint Anselm of Canterbury. Father, thank you for being here again. Thanks Carter, it's great to be here. Last time we talked about one of my favorite books, The Passion of the Christ through the eyes of Mary and we just had an amazing conversation about many passages in that that gave us an insight into Mary's situation at the foot of the cross and through his whole passion and we just learned so much in the previous episode before that we talked about the biography of Saint Anselm and how he was not just a great theologian and philosopher but a devotional writer, a spiritual writer and so he definitely qualifies as a doctor of the church. But my hope as the publisher of Tan is to have Saint Anselm really be seen by our customers as a spiritual director and your work on his different writings is helping with that and I hope this podcast series convinces our readers and our listeners to embrace him as a model for their own life. And so today we're going to talk about this short little work called the glories of heaven, the supernatural gifts that await body and soul and paradise and this is fun because we often talk about what we need to do to get to heaven but in here we talk about what it's going to be like to be in heaven and it's very exciting but we always begin with a prayer offered by you and seeking Saint Anselm's intercession so let's do that again today. Heavenly Father, you teach us to yearn for the things which are above to long for the perfect union with you in love. Through the intercession of Saint Anselm, may we be drawn into this imagining, this desire, this love for the things of heaven. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen. Thank you Father and we continue with the great Saint Anselm of Canterbury, Doctor of the Church. Tell me about, let's just begin by what brought you to this work. You have a lot of old volumes and a digital database of these old ancient saints works. How'd you stumble across this one and why'd you decide to translate it? Well, interesting question, Connor. You know, and I was thinking to myself, how many books have I read about heaven? I thought not a great number and it's so important. It's the ultimate goal of the Christian life and for Benedictine monks in particular, we're told that our heart should be filled with longing for heaven and I happened upon this book and well, I thought, yeah, I read through it and found about its origins that it was originally a conference which Saint Anselm had given to a group of young monks at the monastery of Clutie and I thought, well, this is fantastic. It's so encouraging, so accessible that it was something which I just felt I had to share with contemporary readers. Well, Clutie was a famous monastery, am I correct on that? It was, it was. So it had been founded about 100 years ago before the time of Saint Anselm and was famous for its liturgy and scholarship and at that stage was on continental Europe the biggest, most flourishing monastery there was. So Saint Anselm was invited to visit there because he was a tremendous writer, spiritual leader, whose reputation spread all the way throughout, throughout Christendom at the time. So he was asked to share a few encouraging words with the monks about what heaven was like and the result was this wonderful series of conferences. And to your knowledge, this is the first time this work has been in English? This, yes indeed. This is the first time the work has appeared in English. So although Saint Anselm is such a famous saint and a great doctor of the church, a number of his works haven't yet been translated into English. That's incredible. I mean, you know, a doctor of the church is only 37 and there's works untranslated. That is, that is. But you know, there are a few works by Aquinas that haven't been translated yet. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. So see, it's incredible. It is, it is. Well, I guess the imperative to translate things into English only came about in the last half century. Yeah, yeah. You've only had 50, 60 years of doing this, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess the the imperative, you know, so I mean, but we got a lot, we got a lot of translations to do, you know, so it's exciting and I'm glad Tan can participate in that. So, so this book begins, The Glories of Heaven by, how do you say his name? Admer? Admer? Edmar. Edmar. Edmar, his introductory letter to another monk saying what? Why don't you tell us what this introductory letter is? So in this he begins, I'll just read a little bit. You shall remember, I believe, that when our venerable father, Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury recently spent a few days at the monastery at Clooney, he took the opportunity to say a few words to the assembly of the brothers there. On that occasion, he said many wonderful things about the eternal happiness of the Kingdom of Heaven. And as you no doubt recall, requested that I should note down all that he said in the presence of the brothers at the time and give you a copy for your perusal and edification. And so the result is this work. So, Admar, who also was the main biographer of St. Anselm, transcribed this conference and then wrote it down for at the request of one of his friends who'd asked for it. I got you. Okay. So it's, so you have this guy basically taking some kind of Latin shorthand and then he probably went back and transcribed it like kind of all the way through. They would have written it out by hand yet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he apologizes for some times where he thinks he might have fallen short of what Anselm actually said in the original. But yeah, I'm pretty sure it's an accurate transcription of all that was said in those conferences. That's awesome. So, you know, Anselm has some introductory remarks. But the unique thing about this book is that it starts getting into, I guess you'd call them attributes of the body in heaven. And it starts on page 11. He starts with beauty, the beauty of the bodies of the blessed. Now, one thing this reminded me of and we publish another book called The Happiness of Heaven. It's actually in my top 25, 10 books we publish. And there it does emphasize that the holier you are here on earth, the more glorified your body will be in heaven. And so it's almost like the more you deny your body here, the more glorified it will be later. So did he have a sense of the beauty of the body? Do you think Anselm had a sense of you can have even a more glorified body or less glorified body once you're in heaven? You know, he talks about that later on. And he says that, yeah, there will be differences in the souls of people. But it won't be differences in the sense of rivalry or whatsoever, because it will be in perfect harmony with God. Yes, but this theme of the glorification or the perfection of the body. And this is something, you know, where in our culture, we're probably not that comfortable with because there's a stereotypical idea of what a, you know, beautiful human being, whether it's a man or a woman is supposed to look like. But the fact is, everything which God created is intended to be beautiful. That includes human beings. And while we're in this mortal condition where our bodies are impaired by sin by the result of original sin and so forth. And in heaven, we will be brought to perfection of being exactly what God intended us to do. And this is the highest possible beauty which any person could have. So yeah, so this idea that our bodies will achieve this perfect beauty, working from the premise that beauty is something which all human hearts naturally desire, which we naturally aspire to. Yeah, I think it's a very beautiful thing to keep in mind before we get to all these different attributes, because I've also heard that saints who have appeared to us from heaven have said, if I could go back and live a whole life of suffering just to improve my status in heaven, just a little bit, I would do it, which is, you know, there's no rivalry or anything. Everyone's kind of perfectly happy with, you know, their state, but they know that they could have done more. They could have done more. So I think we're just going to kind of go through this and I'm going to name the attribute and let you kind of mention it, you know, explain it. I will. So the next one is velocity. This is an interesting type of word. When I hear velocity, I think of like the velocity of baseball or something. So the speed by which the glorified bodies can work through heaven. Yeah, and this is interesting. And when I was translating it, the Latin word was velocitas, literally velocity. And I was thinking, is that really the right word in English? You know, because, but I think it is, it is really the best one and the only one there. The idea that velocity, that freedom of movement is something which human beings naturally value and aspire to. And so if we love it now, if we want it now, we're going to have it to its full perfection in the kingdom of heaven. So this means that we'll be able to move around, as he says, just like the angels do, literally at the speed of thought. And he talks about the fastest thing which we can perceive here. And this I think is showing the keenness of his mind. He says, the fastest thing is light, that the rays of the sun reaching the human eye do it in like a split second in almost a moment. But he says, is so much greater will be the velocity of the glorified bodies in heaven, that if these rays of light, which are inanimate things can move so quickly, then our souls which are, which are intrinsically animate, which are animation themselves will be able to move so much more quickly, which is a kind of astonishing idea, isn't it? I mean, I just love the idea of, you know, I mean, maybe it sounds almost fake to us, but it's not. I mean, to be able to zip across the universe and to see what the next galaxy looks like, you know, I mean, just, you know, and, and it's, you know, because we think in terms of speed and maybe, maybe this is a whole concept even above or beyond that, but we're just not limited to, to space and time, you know, so just, you want to see the rest of the universe? There you go. You got it. And that's an amazing thing. I mean, who, if I was going to have that ability in life, I would do whatever was necessary to get that ability, but we're, we're going to be able to have that ability if we just have to live a holy life now. We, indeed, indeed kind of. The immensity of strength, the next one, page 15. So this is remarkable. So he talks about strength as being something which people naturally desire, which, which they naturally want. And if you think one of the worst conditions a human being could be, it would be to be, be deprived of all their physical strength, you know. So he says that this physical strength is going to reach its very perfection, that it's very highest possible degree. And he talks about, like he says here, for those who attain the state of heaven and merit to be numbered amongst the citizens of the celestial Jerusalem, they shall possess such immense strength and power that nothing shall be able to prevent them from performing anything they wish. And there will be no force which is able to remove or overturn them from their state of eternal bliss in the love of God. And they will be able to employ the enormous strength which has been granted to them with no more effort than it currently takes us to blink our eyes. It's incredible. It is indeed. It's incredible. And the next attribute is fairly similar, the unimpaired freedom. And here I'll read this. He says, we shall encounter no obstacle or restrictions whatsoever. There shall be no enclosure which is able to detain us. In a similar way, the body of the Lord after his resurrection could not be held by the tomb. After rising from the dead, he was able to pass through walls and close door with perfect freedom. So kind of a similar idea of powers like we're going to be able to come and go as we please. Indeed. Indeed. And I think this removing of impairments to freedom is so important because during this mortal life, whether we recognize it or not, there are so many things which impair our freedom. We're weighed down by a body, by distance, by physical obstacles. So yeah, to think these things removed will have this perfect freedom which we never experienced in this lifetime. But every human heart longs for freedom. It's one of the fundamental values, I think. Yes, it's amazing. And the next one, the perfect well-being of the souls in heaven. And I think this basically means no pain. Yeah. We have no pain in our body. We have no illness. It's not a big subject to that. Yeah. And when he talks about that, he says that in the present life, even when we think we're perfectly well, we're not really because we're always very close to some injury. He says he is something very interesting. For those who believe themselves to be in completely perfect health, we can test this if it's really true. Take any apparently healthy and sound human body whose possessor considers themselves to be in a particular condition of perfect well-being. Now, if you apply pressure to any part of the body or strike it with any degree of force, immediately the person will explain, exclaim, stop that. You're hurting me. So it shows this fragility, the fact that we're where it kind of entrapped in these mortal flawed bodies all the time, that we never actually experienced perfect well-being while we're in this life. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we often know that the greatest pleasure is the absence of pain. It is. And you experience that after you've been suffering from some pain and it's taken away. Do you think, wow, this is amazing? I think we're going to have some kind of experience like that. I mean, I'm not sitting here in pain right now, but the limitations and the fragility of the human body, I mean, just once we get to heaven and we're freed from that, that's going to be glorious just in and of itself. So the opposite of pain is pleasure. And so the next one, he says, the pleasures of heaven. And he says, we call pleasure all those things which cause delight to the physical senses. And he talks about the sense of smell and sight and vision. So what is the pleasure of heaven like? Yeah. So he talks about this as being an infinite pleasure, a pleasure which will continue to satisfy. And he points out very astutely that any earthly pleasure is only a pleasure for a certain period of time. And after a while starts to cause tedium and then wears away. Is it boredom? Because you often think like, well, do you get bored in heaven? And the answer is clearly no. No, you don't. Yeah. And to think also that this pleasure is something which is going to involve all of our senses, you know, so it's not like sensory deprivation, but rather it's complete sensory fulfillment. So the best possible sensory experiences we could have in this earth will be multiplied to an infinite degree in heaven and then enjoyed for an infinite period of time. He's talking about the difference. He's saying, how do I explain what pleasure is like in heaven? So he kind of says, okay, let's talk about a little bit of pain. He doesn't go dark in this in any way. He's not talking about hell much at all. But he says, I'm going to read a little passage here. He says, I do not see how I can try to explain this, except perhaps through a similitude based on the opposite phenomenon. I'm on page 23. That is pain. Imagine, he's got a vivid imagination. Imagine in your mind a human being and then imagine that burning red hot irons are applied to the pupils of his eyes and to his other members. Think of the great pain he will experience, how agony shall suffice his whole body so that neither the marrow of his bones nor his intestines nor any part of him shall be free from the most extreme discomfort. How could we describe the condition of such a person? He is thoroughly, thoroughly tormented and he will be completely filled with agony and utterly overcome with anguish in a similar but opposite way. And this was his whole point in the future life of heaven. An effable pleasure shall completely inebriate and saturate those who are saved. An unimaginable outflowing of delight shall fill them in all their senses with the most indescribable sweetness. And he talks about their eyes, their ears, their nostrils, their hands, their feet, their throat, their heart, their loins, their lungs, their bones. I mean, it's a beautiful concept like incredible pleasure permeating every pore of our being. Indeed. Yes, it is amazing. And you know, to think about that, he presents an example of pain because I think we could probably more easily imagine the extremity of pain that we can, the extremity of pleasures. Exactly. Exactly. And in fact, you might even say, I wonder, Father, I mean, I bet you we spend more of our time fleeing pain than we do seeking pleasure. Well, I think we do. I think we do. And so many things which we call pleasures in this life are really only the alleviation of pain. Absolutely. Yes, it's a deep insight. It's really good. The next section, the immortality of the life of heaven, which might sound a little obvious. But what does he mean by this? Yeah, so he uses immortality in the sense that our life on earth is limited because it has a final point, whereas the immortality of the life in heaven that will go on and on forever. He says that every human being naturally desires length of life, that we consider length of life to be a blessing. Well, we will have this in heaven, not just a very long life, but an infinitely long life. So this is the immortality. And interestingly, in this book, he doesn't talk so much about eternity as in the sense of beyond time, but rather speaks about as a infinite duration of time, which is a different way of imagining it, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, it is very good. The next thing is wisdom. I particularly enjoyed this one because there's a lot I wish I had answers to, you know? And which one is more attractive to me to be able to fly around the universe super fast, like the high velocity and pick up a building, move mountains with incredible strength, or is it to understand the depths of the mysteries of our faith and of the universe and of human nature? I mean, I'm a want to be philosopher, right? And I just want to understand certain things. And so when I read about wisdom, he says, but in the next life, the blessed souls in heaven shall possess wisdom, which is of such a wonderful extent that there shall be absolutely nothing which they do not know or understand. I mean, so far in the book, that's the one that gives me the most excitement is the wisdom. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so this desire for knowledge, this desire for wisdom is a universal human desire, and it's going to be fulfilled completely in heaven. And St. Edsum talks about this wonderfully. And he also talks about some very interesting philosophical questions which emerge from that, you know? Like our sin. Will everyone know everyone else's sins? And he says, yes, they will, but it won't actually be horrendous or an embarrassing thing because the awareness of sin will be accompanied by the awareness of mercy and forgiveness. Yeah, he mentions that we can better appreciate God's mercy if we have awareness of sin. Yeah. And so it's converted from an emphasis on sin and embarrassment, which we have now, to an emphasis on, wow, look at all these sins and therefore look how awesome God's mercy is. Yes, I think that's right. I think that's right. It's a real beautiful spin on that, and I enjoy that. It kind of takes the embarrassing factor off a little bit because the point is it's not about us, it's about God. Yeah, exactly. The next thing, and this too, this one got me really excited, the wonderful friendships amongst the souls in heaven. Now, you know, I teach Aristotle, and I'm kind of very keen on the idea of what Aristotle refers to as true or virtuous friendship. And in that, you have to have two people who are really dedicated to each other to try to bring about the good and the other, right? So you can't just, it can't be one way. And it's not true friendship if they're just hanging out together to have a good time, or if they're just useful to each other, Aristotle has three types of friendship, utility friendship, pleasure friendship, and then true or virtuous friendship. And so here I kind of see him describing, of course, true or virtuous friendship. He says, you will love your heavenly companions just as they will all love you. And, but here's the point I'm trying to get to. In this life, Father, we're limited to only a couple true friends because it takes time to have those friendships. Aristotle says you can't have a dozen of these things. You just don't have time of the day. You can only have a couple throughout your life. And if you have a couple throughout your life, you're blessed. You know, Aristotle says that. So, but in here, we can have innumerable friendships. And most people, if they've experienced a true friendship, I guess often you can kind of say that that might be found in marriage, you know, in a way. But, you know, even marriage is different because it's sacramental, you know, but, but if you have a true, true friendship, you can look throughout history or maybe people you've known. When a guy has a true friend, he will give up his wealth for that friend. He'll give up his reputation for that friend. Like he'll sacrifice anything for that friend. But you only get to have a couple of them. Yeah. But in heaven, you get to have perhaps thousands, I guess, a million. That's right. That's amazing. I think this is related to the perfect wisdom and perfect understanding that will know all the other souls there perfectly understand them perfectly and be united in this one, this one supreme love of God. So, there will no longer be any place for the things which separate human beings from each other, which is the fact that they don't understand each other or don't know each other, the fact that they're rivals, the fact that they have different values and are seeking different things because they will be united in the Kingdom of Heaven. So, they'll be not only the happiness which one experiences oneself, but the happiness which comes from these other souls whom one will love, also partaking in this same eternal joy. Which is the perfect segue to the next point. I mean, there's such a logical progression for Anselm here. I mean, these are connected. His background, there's a philosopher and a theologian. He's helping them. Yeah. I mean, it's not a coincidence that we went from friendship to now the next one on page 34 is Concord, where we don't have, how much of our life is made up of conflict and disagreement and argument. You know, and I mean, I probably have a propensity towards, you know, arguments, but the idea of heaven, there's no more argument. That seems like huge stress really. I don't have to argue anymore. So, talk about what he means by Concord. Yeah. So, Concord is perfect harmony of will. And this perfect harmony of will comes about through the perfect union of the will of God. Now, with this life, of course, as you mentioned, there's a lot of conflict. It's not that every human soul fundamentally desires what's good, but we all understand what is good in a little different way and the best way to achieve it and so forth. So here, because that obstacle will be removed, there'll be this perfect Concord. And when you when you do experience perfect harmony with another people or group of people, it's a tremendous feeling. It's quite rare, but when it does happen, and it will be the prevailing state in the Kingdom of Heaven. I just like that in my house for a little bit, you know. No arguments in the house. Okay. Yes. I think the closest we get to it in this life is when everyone is asleep. That's true. Yeah, definitely. That's true at my house. The next one's power. Power. You can't have a talk about heaven very long until you start talking about power. Yeah. Now, this is very interesting. And this brings about a point that since our will will be in perfect harmony with the will of God, whatever we wish for, God will also wish for. They say whatever God wishes for, we will also wish for. Which means that in effect, we will find ourselves omnipotent, possessing all power. Whatever we will, we'll be done. I really will be able, if I make it, to move mountains. You will. Yeah. Because the mountains you want to move will be the same as the mountains God wants to move. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. That's great. Now, I love the next one on honor. Now, he begins this one with a great story, you know, about the beggar and king. Oh, yes. Do you remember that? Can you tell us that story? Okay. So, if we imagine there's this king and a beggar, a certain poor and wretched beggar from whom all solace is absent and who is afflicted with hideous ulcers and other foul wounds and infirmities. Now imagine that a most powerful and magnificent king is passing by and happens to see this poor wretched lying in the dirt by the wayside. And the king feels pity and compassion for the poor man and commands that his wounds be treated and healed, and that the beggar should be clothed in fine garments from his own stores. And he also goes on to adopt this wretched beggar as his very own son and henceforth commands that all the subjects of his kingdom are to regard him as his own adopted son. And so that no one is to belittle him or disparage him upon him anyway. Now think about the great honor which this beggar has received in being clothed by this magnificent king and adopted as his own son. Now, that's what's happened to every single human soul. We were in this state of wretched dejection and God himself, the king of the universe, has singularly chosen each one of us and clothed us with his honor and commanded that we be his adopted sons or daughters. So yeah, it's an awesome thing to think we will have that honor of being an adopted son of not just any king, but of the supreme king. I find it interesting, that's how Anselm decided to explain honor is by showing this honor, which we don't deserve being bestowed on us by somebody way above us. And that's why he tells that little parable. Yeah, we will have the dignity of true sons and daughters of God. On page 42, absolute security. Another interesting thing about heaven. I don't really think about that, but we live a whole lot of our lives without security. We do. And this, of course, varies. Sometimes we can be in a state of acute insecurity where we're not sure of of our status in the world of our future prosperity, our future survival even. But even when we feel relatively secure in this world, we're only relatively secure, not absolutely secure, because so much could happen. The unexpected could happen. But this will be completely removed in heaven. So we will then have absolute security, realizing that everything we possess, we possess eternally that nothing could be taken away from us. The final attribute that he gives is perfect joy. And that's interesting to me because joy is joy and happiness. I always kind of get confused on what the difference is between joy and happiness, but there's something very exciting about joy. So do you recall anything about this, about what perfect joy and heaven is like? It's almost, to me, it's almost like a summary of everything we just read come together. It is, it is. And he emphasizes also that this perfect joy is going to be multiplied by the fact that all the other souls whom we will all love and be in perfect harmony with will also be seeing this joy. So he says, if you have a perfect friendship and one of your friends has wonderful joy, you're also filled with joy. Now, this is going to be multiplied to a huge, extrapolated to a huge extent because of the very multitude of the souls in heaven. So the joy of everyone else will multiply one's own. If I could just read a little bit from here, he says, there shall be a thousand times a thousand souls who enjoy the perfection of happiness, or rather a thousand times a hundred thousand, or rather a number which is utterly incomprehensible and uncountable. And applying the principle we have just described, each one shall have their own joys multiplied in perceiving the joys of all the others. Yeah, that's great. It gives me some hope that there's a good number of people there. So, you know, on page, I'm going to skip ahead a little bit for the sake of time. And on page 53, he finally gets to, you know, he's been describing heaven and our glorified bodies, but then he gets to, okay, so in order to get the heaven, you have to have a certain attribute. And this little section is entitled on the necessity of self-knowledge, confession, and humility. And, you know, in a previous podcast, you and I have talked about humility, you know, and how important that is. And he has some interesting things to say here about humility. But my mind focused in on one. And it's where you had a footnote where, on page 55, he says, he's talking about how some people back in, I guess back in his day, they had to kind of make public confessions in the monastery. And he talks about what true humility is. Do you remember this? Yeah, can you talk about that a little bit? Okay, so he says, true humility comes about when you're prepared to accept your faults when other people identify them. And I think there's a lot of truth to this, that, you know, each of us, if we're asked, you know, what's a fault you have, we can probably name one or two or several. And we're okay with that. But then if someone else tells us one of our faults, we're not so okay with that. So, you know, we're okay to say, you know, I'm, I'm a bit slack about this or whatever. If someone else says, you're a bit slack about this, then we get upset. And, you know, I think that's what he's saying is true humility is to be able to receive calmly and honestly other people finding our faults. If you think about it, it's other people really who are best qualified to tell us what our own faults are. You know, often if we say, what are your own faults, you know, people will say something like, you know, I'm too much of a perfectionist or, you know, I work too hard or, you know, they do, they do. But whenever I interview people who want a job here, I'll say, okay, what are your faults? And they say, you know, I just really work too hard. And I'm like, come on, get out of here. Give me something real, man, you know? Yeah, yeah. So I think this openness to having, to listening to the criticism of others. And if you think about it, the criticism of others is always true, you know, because if someone says, you know, you're impatient or say, no, I'm not impatient. Well, I mean, it's the way you treat others the way you come across, which really, so I think this openness is real humility. And they might have had a practice back in the old days and monasteries where you stood up and kind of confessed yourself. You know, there is a practice which I'm not sure if any monasteries still do this, but there used to be what was called a chapter of faults, where each week you would go and say whatever your faults were, whatever you'd done wrong. And then the community would also add to that, oh, yes, and you've also done this wrong and this wrong. So I think probably it's wise that we don't have that anymore, I know, in our community and probably in most communities it would be a formula for disaster. Yeah, I guess the times have changed. At the end of this book, there's another part of this and it's called an exhortation to strive for the glories of heaven. And it's on page 74. And I just love how he starts it. He says, my friend, what is it that you're doing? I mean, I kind of hear him almost yelling at me. Why is it that like a beast, you immerse yourself so enthusiastically and avidly in the vein and ephemeral things of this passing world? And then he kind of lectures to us about how we got to get serious. As I read this, I felt a kick in the butt by my spiritual director, St. Anne Anselm. So this is a very powerful couple pages where he's talking directly to us very assertively, saying to restrain yourself from all earthly things, emulate the angels, and strive to make all your thoughts, desires chased and holy, free your soul from the chains which bind it to the passing vanities of the material realm. I mean, it's so strong, it's very, very strong. And it's almost encouraging. I kind of feel like a coach or something on the sideline is yelling at you, encouraging you, motivating you to play harder. That's what I experienced with this. Oh, yes, yes. This is such a powerful discourse. And these are some of the language which we don't hear so much these days, the vanities of this passing world and so forth. But yeah, there is this great wisdom and encouragement in this exhortation, you know, what are we doing? Our time here is limited that we were destined for somewhere else. We're just passing through here. We're letting ourselves, you know, it's a bit like a person on a journey, stopping too long to look at the scenery around them and getting too involved with what's going on while they're on the journey. Yeah, you got to get somewhere. The destination. Yeah, yeah. And the very last, I thought I would just read a little bit of the very last paragraph, second to last paragraph of the book. And he does something, Father, that I've never really done. He just does it in a slightly different way than I've ever considered it. He says, act and think now as if you are dead to the world and let the world be dead to you. Look at the glories of this passing sphere as if you are already amongst the dead and had left all mortal cares and aspirations far behind. Imagine that you're already resting in your tomb and that the wealth, honor and pleasure of this terrestrial orb mean nothing to you to not allow your heart to be infatuated with anything from which you are destined to be separated either sooner or later. For whatever you are not able to possess eternally, you never truly possess at all. And in the very last paragraph, do nothing for the sake of obtaining merely human praise or popular acclaim or public fame for such things involve much effort and anxiety, but they are really nothing at all. Instead, do everything for the sake of the eternal life and the everlasting unbound happiness of heaven, which if you but act justly, love tenderly and believe sincerely Christ in his infinite mercy and love shall most assuredly bestow upon you who with the Father in the Holy Spirit lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen. This is a powerful way to close this remarkable book. I know this, this the reason that St. Anselm, Father, in my opinion, is such a great spiritual master, a spiritual director for us is because here he is like he's imploring us, you know, 60, how many thousand years later almost, you know, he's imploring us to strive for heaven hard, you know, and to work at it hard. And I love this volume because he's showing us how glorious our bodies will be in heaven. But we have to begin now by detaching ourselves from our bodies, from the devil's temptation and from the world. Indeed, indeed, indeed. And this detachment doesn't imply that, you know, that we don't do anything while we're here. We continue to do our duties to live the Christian life, to fulfill the Gospel, to serve God and to serve our fellow men. But we do it all as pilgrims passing through a strange land. We have no lasting dwelling here that what everything which is here today will be gone tomorrow, including ourselves. But this eternity which awaits us is so immense, so important that it should be our number one priority at all times. In closing, I'll just say that, you know, the reason I think this is such an important book for traditional Catholics is, you know, we have a tendency sometimes, Father, to overemphasize purgatory and hell and the devil and, you know, you know, traditional Catholics, we love the stories of exorcisms. I mean, we enjoy those things to some extent because it's interesting. But as you mentioned earlier, there's not a lot of books written about heaven. There's more books written about hell. And it's important for us Catholics to dwell on heaven seeing the prize that awaits us and not to become overly morbid by focusing too much on the negative things. And so I feel that this is very edifying, this is very uplifting, it's very motivational. And in fact, in my personal life, Father, I find thinking about what the glorified body can be as more motivational than just avoiding the pains of hell. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think that's absolutely right. We should give priority to meditating upon the joys of heaven rather than fear of hell. And of course, hell is greatly to be feared. But our God is a God who wants to reward us, who wants us to attain heaven. And that that's what we're created for. So this is this is what our souls are made for. So we should spend time meditating upon heaven. Of course, we can never do it perfectly as himself himself knows. But whatever we do is is a step in the right direction and the motivation of reminding us why we're living the Christian life. Yeah. Well, thank you, Father. And in our next episode, we're going to just do a quick overview and conclusion of this man and his works and his influence St. Anselm and talk about how we think that he's a great model for us in our daily lives. So thank you for being here again. Thank you for your work translating this magnificent product by St. Anselm. And thanks for being here with us talking to our readership and listeners. God bless you. Thanks very much. God bless you. This has been an episode of The Spiritual Masters, a podcast from Tan Books and Tan Direction. To follow the show, learn about more inspiring holy men and women, and to get special offers exclusive to Spiritual Masters listeners, sign up at SpiritualMastersPodcast.com. And thanks for listening.