Let us now consider the joys of the glorified body. And first presents itself the joy of the sense of sight, which is the noblest among the bodily senses, and whose office extends most delightfully and most widely. In the heavenly fatherland it will rejoice first in the splendor and beauty of its own body. For it will see (Phil. 3) its body reformed by Christ, and conformed to the body of His brightness, as the Apostle says in the Epistle to the Philippians. Nor will its brightness be less than the brightness of the sun: for the same Apostle testifies in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 26) that Christ, to whose splendor we are to be conformed, was seen by him above the brightness of the sun; and the Lord Himself speaks in the Gospel and says: Then shall the just shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matt. 13). What a sight, then, and how pleasing, will the eyes of the blessed behold, when their hands and their feet and all their members they discern sending forth rays of light from themselves, so that they no longer need the light of the sun or of the moon, and much less of lamp or candle, to scatter all darkness on every side? But they will see not only their own body shining like the sun, but the bodies of all the blessed, and first of all that of Christ Himself and of His most holy Mother. How greatly does the one sun gladden the whole earth at its rising! What then will it be to see at once innumerable suns, illustrious not for their light alone, but most beautiful in the variety and comeliness of their members? Nor in that place will the eyes have to be closed, lest perchance they be hurt by too great a splendor: for the eyes themselves will be blessed, and therefore impassible and immortal; for He who will strengthen the eyes of the mind with the light of glory, lest in seeing God face to face they be overwhelmed by the glory, will also strengthen the eyes of the body with the gift of impassibility, that without injury they may behold not one sun, but innumerable,
To the joy of the eyes will also be added what St. Augustine (bk. 22, ch. 19) teaches in the book of The City of God: that the most blessed Martyrs will bear, in that part of the body in which they endured torments, the most beautiful and comely marks of virtue. What will it be, then, to see St. Stephen adorned with as many precious gems as he endured blows of stones upon his body? What to see the necks of Paul and the rest of the Apostles, and of others almost without number, that were severed for Christ, shining — thrice ennobled and more precious than all gold — with incredible beauty? What to behold St. Bartholomew, whose skin was torn from his whole body, so resplendent in his whole body that he seems to surpass all purple, however precious? What will it be — to pass over the rest — to see Peter, and Andrew, and very many others who endured the punishment of the cross, bearing in their hands and feet, as it were, most brilliant stars with infinite comeliness? For of Christ, the King of Martyrs, who willed to retain those most holy marks for His own glory and our consolation, no tongue can tell with what light they will shine: since all the glory of the blessed compared with the glory of Christ is less than if the beauty of the stars were compared with the beauty of the sun.
What shall I now say of the delight that the eyes of the blessed will take in the sight of that whole most spacious city, which the Prophet and the Apostle (Isa. 54; Rev. 21), finding no words sufficiently worthy, declared to be wholly of gold, and adorned with gems and pearls and precious stones?
What, finally, of the new heaven (Isa. 65; Rev. 21) and the new earth, which the holy Scriptures promise us after the day of the last judgment, and of the renewal and change into a better state of the whole universe of things? For as these things are unknown to us, so they will delight the eyes of the blessed with a new and wondrous joy when their beauty begins to be beheld.