God Is Faithful:
A Retreat Guide on Mary’s Assumption Into Heaven
The newest Retreat Guide from RC Spirituality, God Is Faithful: A Retreat Guide on Mary’s Assumption into Heaven, is now available at www.RCSpirituality.org.
The Blessed Virgin Mary led a life full of suffering. But she never let that suffering obscure her faith in God. She continued to believe in God and God’s promises, even when King Herod tried to kill the baby Jesus, when the Holy Family had to escape to Egypt, and when Jesus was rejected, condemned and crucified in front of her very eyes.
She always stayed faithful to God, because she knew that God himself is faithful, trustworthy, even though she didn’t always understand everything he was doing.
And at the end of her life, when her mission on earth was finished, her trust in God was abundantly vindicated. God chose to reward her with a very special grace: he assumed her, body and soul, directly into heaven.
God was able to show his faithfulness to her in an extraordinary way, giving her through the Assumption the joy of a special participation in Christ’s resurrection, because she had been faithful to him.
This mysterious and extraordinary expression of mutual faithfulness can instruct and inspire us, if we give it the chance. And that’s exactly what this Retreat Guide (click here), God Is Faithful: A Retreat Guide on Mary’s Assumption into Heaven, will try to do.
- The first meditation will reflect on how Mary’s faithfulness can help guide our own Christian lives.
- The second meditation will explore how Mary’s special experience of God’s faithfulness in her Assumption foreshadows the future experience of the whole Church.
- And in the conference, we will reflect on how great Christian art—so much of which has been inspired by the Blessed Virgin Mary—can feed our souls.
To begin, let’s quiet our souls and turn our attention to the Lord who filled Mary with grace, and let’s ask him to do the same for us, so that we too can experience, more fully than ever that, “God is faithful” (1 Corinthians 1:9).
About Fr. John Bartunek, LC
Fr. John Bartunek, LC, S.Th.D, received his BA in History from Stanford University in 1990. He comes from an evangelical Christian background and became a member of the Catholic Church in 1991. After college he worked as a high school history teacher, drama director, and baseball coach. He then spent a year as a professional actor in Chicago before entering the religious Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ in 1993. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 2003 and earned his doctorate in moral theology in 2010. He provided spiritual support on the set of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” while researching the 2005 Catholic best seller “Inside the Passion”–the only authorized, behind-the-scene explanation of the film. Fr. John has contributed news commentary regarding religious issues on NBC, CNN, Fox, and the BBC. He also served as the English-language press liaison for the Vatican’s 2005 Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist. His most widely known book is called: “The Better Part: A Christ-Centered Resource for Personal Prayer”. He has also published four other titles: “Seeking First the Kingdom”, “Answers: Catholic Advice for Your Spiritual Questions”, “Meditations for Mothers”, and “A Guide to Christian Meditation”. Fr. John currently splits his time between Rome and Rhode Island, where he teaches theology as an adjunct professor at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum and at Mater Ecclesia College. He is also continuing his writing apostolate with online retreats at www.RCSpirituality.org and questions and answers on the spiritual life at www.RCSpiritualDirection.com. FATHER JOHN’S BOOKS include: “The Better Part: A Christ-Centered Resource for Personal Prayer”, “Inside the Passion”–The Only Authorized Insiders View of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, “Meditations for Mothers”, and “A Guide to Christian Meditation”.
