The Life of the World to Come

Biographies & Memoirs

Vonier, Dom Anscar

Arts & Literature

Kessinger Publishing

Dom Anscar Vonier, Abbot of Buckfast, was among England’s greatest homilists and theologians of the early twentieth century. His works include "A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist" and "The Personality of Christ."   In this work of remarkable eloquence, Abbot Vonier explores the reality of the Church as a permanent sign of the Holy Spirit dwelling on Earth. Through a sustained reflection on the miracle of Pentecost, Vonier shows that the same presence of the Spirit, revealed in miracles on that day, abides in the Church even now—a truth clearly seen in the Church’s power to heal the sins of her members, as “a function of Christ’s risen life.”  Vonier’s powerful, Biblical theology of the Church features impressively clear explanations of continuity and change in the Church, renewal, liturgy, and the sacramental life, which anticipate many of the great theological insights that would later animate the Second Vatican Council.  He writes, “We are all plunged into one river of life, the Spirit; we all drink the same cup of life, the Spirit; through the Spirit we are as one life. Such unity never existed before: it is the miracle of Pentecost, a miracle that will last through all eternity.”

The Spirit and the Bride

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

Assumption Press

The Angels

Dom Anscar Vonier, Abbot of Buckfast, was among England's most celebrated homilists and theological writers in the early twentieth century. In this concise primer, Vonier introduces the reader to one of the most noble, but overlooked, elements of Catholic theology: the nature of angels. Drawing from Scripture, Patristic sources, and St. Thomas Aquinas, Vonier unfolds the metaphysical and moral characteristics of this mysterious group of spirits. Far from the soft, sentimentalized depiction of angels in much modern artwork, what emerges from Vonier's account is a picture of sheer vastness and awe, of an innumerable variety of pure spirits, filling the infinite space between God and humanity. To know these greatest of created beings, Vonier writes, will be "a great element in man's eternal happiness" and "the last thing in created love; greater love than that there could not be except man's communion with God himself."

Dom Anscar Vonier, Abbot of Buckfast, was among England’s greatest homilists and theologians of the early twentieth century. His works include "A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist" and "The Spirit and the Bride." Having explored the unity of Christ’s Divine Person in The Personality of Christ, Abbot Vonier now considers his duality of natures, divine and human. In a penetrating account, he shows how both the divine and the human in Christ, by retaining their distinction and individual integrity, each operate fully in Christ’s priestly work of obtaining eternal redemption for humanity. In consequence, the Church approaches both natures with an attitude of reverence and “worships everything in Christ, his body and his blood, his heart and his head, his acts and his thoughts.” These are no mere exegetical treatises for the trained philosopher; their common purpose is to strengthen devotion, not by appealing to sentiment but by adapting to modern needs the classical exposition of the Fathers and Scholastics, especially those of his great Master in Divinity—St. Thomas Aquinas. The style however is clear and free from technical terms." - The Irish Monthly

Christ the King of Glory (Christological Triliogy)

Dom Anscar Vonier, Abbot of Buckfast, was among England’s greatest homilists and theologians of the early twentieth century. His works include "A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist" and "The Spirit and the Bride."  In this final book of his Christological Trilogy, Abbot Vonier gives an inspiring account of Christ’s triumph over death and its centrality to the life of the Church. Through a close study of the New Testament, Vonier unfolds how the truth of Christ as Victor informs the Church’s liturgy and aposotolic mission, giving to all Christian spirits the means of understanding and confronting the presence of evil in the world. Vonier writes, “The Catholic Church then, must at all times be viewed in the light of Christ’s victory; it is her very life to believe in that victory, to feed on it, to glorify it through the Spirit that is in her. Any diminution of her faith in Christ’s victory would be a death-blow to her; for she is not living on an edifying memory, but she ﬁghts for the King of Glory whom the heavens have received.” Praise for "The Victory of Christ": "The Victory of Christ is a literary mosaic portraying the meaning of the eternal triumph of the Redeemer as seen from various points of view and as it should be imprinted as a reality on the mind of the faithful."  -Dom Bernard Moss, in "The Downside Review" "The gripping reality of Christ’s victory cannot be set forth in few words, nor can it be understood by the unbeliever. But the sincere Christian who reads this book once, and perhaps again, will be rewarded and comforted by a clear realization of the truth which the Christian ages celebrate as the Victory of Christ."  -Orate Fratres

The Victory of Christ (Christological Trilogy)

"The first theologian in modern times to discover to our wonder and joy the fully sacramental character of the Mass was, doubtless, that profound and personal thinker, Abbot Vonier." - Fr. W. Barden, O.P.
 In his greatest, and most influential masterpiece, Abbot Vonier gives a spiritually and intellectually enriching explanation of the Eucharist based on a careful study of “the great sacramental doctrine of the Church” found in the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Council of Trent. Vonier writes, “To conceive the sacrifice of Mass as a sacrament is a simple visualization of a great truth which, if it be once grasped by the mind … makes all the difference between light and fantasy.” The great beauty and intellectual clarity of the Church’s theology as explained by Vonier reminds the reader over and over that “In theological matters the spark that illumines always comes from under the hoof of strict reasoning.”

A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist

Dom Anscar Vonier was one of England’s most popular Catholic preachers and theologians of the early twentieth century, famous for clearly explaining the theology of Aquinas for lay readers. Faced with the rising tide of modern skepticism about the spiritual nature of the soul, Vonier composed this book as a study in two great themes of Catholic theology: the immortality of the soul and the goodness of divine judgment.  His treatment of the soul presents the Church’s teaching on the state of the soul after death, and the delivery from death found only in the resurrection. In his reflections on divine judgement, Vonier emphasizes the essential goodness of judgement as “the moral side of providence." Contrary to the fear and anxiety often associated with Christian judgment, Vonier shows that Christ’s perfection as a judge is one of his most lovable aspects, insisting that “Genuine Christian sentiment has ever been deeply impregnated with this trait of Christ as the just Judge, and Christians have always found it possible to love him with the tenderest love because they know him to be such. … Our Jesus would be less amiable if he were less true and less powerful in his judgements.”   Praise for Abbot Vonier and “Death and Judgement”:  "In this little book, Dom Vonier confronts the leaders of soul-shrinking secularism with the glorious standard of the risen Christ." -Edwin V. O'Hara, Bishop of Great Falls  “Dom Vonier's aim in all his spiritual writings is the instruction of Catholics. ... In his pages we have the accuracy of a theological textbook combined with the enthusiasm of the pulpit.” -Michael Harty, in "The Furrow"   "To our thinking, Abbot Vonier is by all odds the foremost theological writer in the English language today. Although a Thomistic scholar, he can present doctrine not merely in the systematized manner of the scholastics, but also in the living manner of the liturgy, or, if you will, in the … tradition of the Fathers, for whom theology was a loving consideration of the ways of God with man, and the appeal of whose writings consequently embraces heart and mind with equal immediacy. … Thus many of his theological writings are simultaneously most fruitful 'spiritual reading'—which is what all theology should be." --“Orate Fratres”

Death and Judgement

“There is nothing deeper, nothing kinder, nothing more merciful than Catholic theology on the human soul. It is the oldest and most persevering sentiment, combined with the highest and most exact thought.” So writes Abbot Vonier in this dynamic and illuminating study of the human spirit. 
 Following the teachings of the Catholic Church and St. Thomas Aquinas, Vonier expounds the greatness of the human soul, its destiny and glory, its association with the angels and God, its union with the body, and the tragedy of losing one’s soul through sin. This work, which is at once philosophical and mystical, stimulates the mind and heart to a deep contemplation and love for the God who created in man a spiritual soul like to himself.
 “There are those who regard The Human Soul as the Abbot’s best work. … For [Vonier], the writing of books was part of his priestly activity. … The book is a study of man both in light of reason and the higher splendor of divine revelation. In that medium, man is seen to be, in St. Augustine’s magnificent phrase, ‘an earthly being, but one fit for heaven.’”—Dom Ernest Graf, in Anscar Vonier: Abbot of Buckfast

The Human Soul and its Relations with Other Spirits

Dom Anscar Vonier was among England's greatest homilists and theological writers in the early twentieth century. In "The New and Eternal Covenant," he offers a sustained reflection on the eternal nature of the New Covenant as the "family heritage" of the Church of God and as the root of the sacramental life. "The Covenant," Vonier writes, "is an alliance between God and man; it is a peace concluded between divine Justice and the sinner; it is a friendship between the Creator and His creature; and if man were not thus united with his Maker there would be no true Covenant. Between God and man there is a bond, and without that bond the Testament would not exist."

The New and Eternal Covenant

Dom Anscar Vonier, Abbot of Buckfast, was among England's greatest homilists and theologians of the early twentieth century. His many classic works include A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist, The Life of the World to Come, and The Personality of Christ.\nIn Christianus, Abbot Vonier presents an absorbing theological reflection on how the indwelling of Christ expresses itself in the Christian moral life, in the visible “form of the Christian Person.” Through a series of meditations on the distinct components of Catholic morality and spirituality—discipleship, prayer, liturgy, fruitfulness, temptation, citizenship, preparation for death—Vonier offers a view of how the whole Christian person is formed, from the center out, by the charity of Christ.\nBoth personally inspiring and theologically exact, Vonier’s reflections lead the reader to a distinctly Christ-centered view of the truly happy life. He insists that to experience joy in the practice of virtue, “We must, above all things, become wise in the mysteries of Christ’s personality.”

Christianus: The Form of the Catholic Person

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