Description: This book offers an intelligent but accessible recovery of the Christian hope for heaven and the resurrected life. Our ideas of heaven often need rescuing from the well-meaning but often empty sense of a "better-place." It is more fruitful, the author argues, to orientate ourselves by St. Paul's words: "For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come." Each of us desires Eden while struggling to make good out of evil. The things we cherish have their goodness diluted and drained of life. Through it all, we cannot quite picture heaven and our eternal happiness. It feels remote and unreal. Yet the recovery of paradise in our hearts and minds is the crucial act of our lives. Through it we can understand the meaning behind the greatest commandment: "Love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind."
Brief description: Caitlin Smith Gilson is professor of philosophy at St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary, Florida, and visiting professor of philosophy at Pontificia Università della Santa Croce in Rome. Dr. Gilson is associate editor of The New Ressourcement and author of numerous books of philosophical theology and poetry.