Tractatio verborum domini, in domo patris mei mansiones multae sunt, &c. ex XIIII. cap. Evang. secundum Ioannem

IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE. 6

can attain. Whence it differs very much from the visible heaven, or from those lower heavens, serving the corruptible world in various matters. For that one is illustrious with the light and glory of God, subject to no vicissitudes, but altogether such as the Apostle John describes through figurative and most ample words toward the end of the Apocalypse or Revelation of Jesus Christ. Concerning this same heaven, the Apostle seems to have declared to the Corinthians thus: "We know that if our earthly home of this tabernacle is destroyed, we have a building from God, a home not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Although this passage is almost always explained regarding the resurrection of bodies, there are not wanting those who do not wrongly understand and interpret the same regarding the state of the blessed life and the heavenly mansion. These words of St. Augustine certainly agree beautifully in all things with ours, which are read thus in book 1 of De Sermone Domini in Monte On the Sermon of the Lord on the Mount: When the Lord says, "Your reward is copious in heaven," I do not think heaven is called the superior parts of the visible world (our superior parts are already so called). For our reward, which