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Heaven in Stone and Glass

Heaven in Stone and Glass

Experiencing the Spirituality of the Great Cathedrals

by Bishop Robert Barron

Format
Regular price $39.96 USD
Regular price $69.90 USD Sale price $39.96 USD
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This beautifully crafted coffee table book comes with free lifetime digital access to Bishop Barron's accompanying film, Heaven in Stone and Glass.

Like a mystical tome waiting to be deciphered, a Gothic cathedral holds many secrets about Christ, the Christian life, and the soul's yearning for God. In Heaven in Stone and Glass, Bishop Robert Barron teaches us how to read these secrets, with beautiful meditations on aspects such as light and darkness, the labyrinth, gargoyles and demons, and vertical space. Whether you're preparing for a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame in Paris or looking ahead to bedside reflection on sacred space, this book is the perfect guide. 

Featuring:

  • Over 90 full-color photos of the French Gothic cathedrals featured in the film 
  • A beautiful custom design 
  • A new preface from Bishop Barron 
  • Endnotes 
  • Index 
  • And more!

Details

Publisher: Word on Fire
ISBN: 978-1-68578-294-8
Binding: Hardcover
Page count: 176
Language: English
Release date: Nov 16, 2026
Platform: Word on Fire Digital lifetime streaming access (You will receive an email with instructions to access your digital film after checkout.)
Publisher: Word on Fire
Language: English
Release date: Nov 16, 2026
Duration: 2 hours, 30 min
Platform: Lifetime access Word on Fire Digital app streaming + offline access (You will receive an email with instructions to access your audiobook after checkout.)

About the Author

Bishop Robert Barron

Bishop Robert Barron is the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries and the host of CATHOLICISM, a groundbreaking, award-winning documentary about the Catholic faith. On July 21, 2015, Pope Francis announced his appointment as Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and on June 2, 2022, he appointed Bishop Barron the ninth bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester (Minnesota). Ordained in 1986 in the Archdiocese of Chicago, Bishop Barron received a master’s degree in philosophy from The Catholic University of America in 1982 and a doctorate in sacred theology from the Institut Catholique de Paris in 1992.

Shipping & Returns

When will my order ship?

  • When items are in-stock, orders placed before 8am CT should ship out that same business day from our Illinois warehouse. 
  • Depending on your shipping address and the shipping method you select at checkout, in-stock items should arrive between 7-10 business days.
  • If your order contains a preordered/backordered item, no items in your order will ship until the preordered item becomes available (i.e. your order will ship all at once.)

 

Do you ship internationally?

  • We offer two international shipping methods, Passport and DHL. Passport has all taxes and duties included in the shipping cost. DHL is delivered duties unpaid, and you may be responsible for taxes and duties when your package is delivered. 
  • International orders are subject to unpredictable delays by customs, and are subject to security mandates, duties, and other fees upon receipt.  
  • Please allow international orders a significant amount of flexibility in timeframe to receipt. 
  • We do accept international returns, but we are unable to generate return labels for international shipments. 

 

Can I make changes or corrections to my order?

  • Please contact us as soon as possible—ideally within 2 hours of placing your order—at 866-928-1237 or sales@wordonfire.org with your order correction details. We’ll work quickly to see if any edits to your order are still possible.
  • Once an order has shipped, we are unable to cancel it.

Return Policy

For non-damaged, standard returns:

Our products may be returned if they were purchased within the last 90 days, are unused, and are still in their original packaging. Original shipping costs are already collected by the shipper, and therefore the original shipping costs are not refundable.

We will provide a pre-paid return label to you. The maximum shipping cost covered will be $20. If the return shipping costs in excess of $20 to ship it to us, that will be deducted from the refund amount. (Meaning, if one orders 30 bibles and changes their mind after receiving them, it would not be good stewarding of our donor-provided funds for the ministry to cover that return shipment.)


Exceptions and limitations:

  • Bulk books (evangelization pricing): Books sold in pre-boxed quantities are evangelistic in nature and priced as low as possible, and we cover the original shipping cost. For that reason, we are unable to cover return shipping costs for bulk books. If you choose to return a bulk book, return shipping will be the customer’s responsibility in that case.
  • Seasonal titles (including Advent and Lenten Gospel Reflections): Seasonal titles are final sale and are not eligible for returns or refunds.


For damaged items: 

For damages to the item that are significant in nature, such as missing pages, large gashes in the cover, major creases in the cover, or dents, etc, please email us at sales@wordonfire.org for a no-cost replacement. For minor damages, like a nick or otherwise tiny blemish, or a slightly bent inward corner, or a slightly flaked embossing, these returns may be accepted but the return shipping will not be covered in order to be good stewards of the donor provided funds that make our non-profit ministry possible. For items that are shipped in protective packaging, such as the Leather Bible, note that the outer box is meant to absorb damage in shipping, and the box should not be considered the product itself, and the box is not replaceable.

 

How can I set up my return? 

Please email us to set up your return at sales@wordonfire.org. 

Your order record will be retrieved by the system based on the email address you used to make the purchase. For this reason, please have the email address or the order number (example: Q######) handy when beginning the return process. We are able to accept international returns, but we are unable to generate return shipping labels from countries outside the United States.  

 

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Middle-aged man wearing glasses and bishop attire with a magenta zucchetto and gold chain against a plain dark background.

About the Author

Bishop Robert Barron is the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries and the host of CATHOLICISM, a groundbreaking, award-winning documentary about the Catholic faith. On July 21, 2015, Pope Francis announced his appointment as Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and on June 2, 2022, he appointed Bishop Barron the ninth bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester (Minnesota). Ordained in 1986 in the Archdiocese of Chicago, Bishop Barron received a master’s degree in philosophy from The Catholic University of America in 1982 and a doctorate in sacred theology from the Institut Catholique de Paris in 1992.

What People Are Saying

“It is a paradox of our age: We have endless information at our fingertips but struggle to see how things fit together. We can only deal now, really, with fragmented realities. We are baffled, even troubled, by phenomena that represent well-thought-out, coherent wholes. Our medieval cathedrals are such wholes. In this companionable book, Bishop Barron helps us consider their beauty and understand their ordered charm. He prepares us better to appreciate these monuments of old, but he does more; he gently indicates a specifically Christian way of living in the world.”

—Bishop Erik Varden, author of Towards Dawn: Essays in Hopefulness and Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses

“Bishop Robert Barron has gifted the world with a winsome and compelling paean to Gothic architecture in his work Heaven in Stone and Glass. Shaking off the dust of neglect and ignorance from these venerable churches, Bishop Barron explores the exquisite symbolic poetry of rose windows, stained glass, and flying buttresses, inviting readers to see Gothic cathedrals as glorious storybooks, recounting the wondrous story of salvation through light, color, form, and human creativity.”

—Elizabeth Lev, art historian and author of How Catholic Art Saved the Faith: The Triumph of Beauty and Truth in Counter-Reformation Art

“A Gothic cathedral is a ‘story’ to be ‘read,’ yet a story told in a symbolism that even to the contemporary Christian mind remains opaque. With his keen sensitivity to the way of beauty, and with the theologian’s deep understanding of Christian iconography, Bishop Barron shows us how, for example, the interior of Notre-Dame in Paris serves as a kind of womb, a place of gestation and birth; how the rose window of Chartres functions as a picture of the well-ordered soul; and how even the playful weirdness of gargoyles, hybrid grotesques, are comic types of the Son of God made flesh. Heaven in Stone and Glass constitutes a pilgrimage of the imagination to some of the greatest masterpieces in the Christian tradition, and like all good pilgrimages, its ultimate aim is to take you into the very heart of Christ. What better guide for such a pilgrimage than Bishop Robert Barron!”

—Daniel McInerny, author of Beauty and Imitation: A Philosophical Reflection on the Arts and of the novel The Good Death of Kate Montclair

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