Assumption

Immortal Openness to God

Dear Friends,

“Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:25-26).

Shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, which instantiated Communism in Russia and established what was perhaps history’s first explicitly atheist regime, the Irish poet W.B. Yeats attempted to capture the spirit of the age. “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer/Things fall apart; the center cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…”

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold… It is, perhaps, still an apt expression for our fragmented society – and for our own quest for self-fulfillment. The more we try to hold things together by our own power, the more we realize how hopeless the endeavor truly is.

Death, from one perspective, is the final falling apart. We lose control one last time: and this loss appears definitive. As Pope Benedict XVI described it, death is “the impossibility of giving oneself a foothold, the final collapse of self-determination.”

Christ, however, is the one in whom all things hold together (Colossians 1:17). As we cede control to him, our hearts open to life and begin to flourish; and death loses its sting.

Each August 15 the Church celebrates the solemnity of the Assumption to remind us of that truth. For in Mary, we see someone fully opened to the Lord. In Mary we see someone who surrendered everything to God; someone who, instead of shrieking, “I want it my way!” trustingly replied, “Let it be done to me according to your word.” Where that openness to God is present, the body’s earthly life still ends, but eternal life, body and soul united in the glory of God, is assured.

Things do indeed fall apart, but we can choose our response. We can clutch and grasp to the bitter end, or we can surrender everything to the God who loves us.  And in that daily letting go, which is a very real sort of death, we enter more deeply into the mystery of Mary’s Assumption as the fulfillment of God’s promise and the joyful auspice of our own calling to eternal life.

God bless you,

Fr. John Pietropaoli
Two Priests and a Mic podcaster

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Regnum Christi Spirituality Center Ask a Priest

“Ask a Priest: How Can I Defend Belief in the Assumption?”

Q: I engaged in a hostile argument with my friend Jeff over whether or not Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven, since there is no reference to it in the Bible. He is referring to my belief as “past blind faith” and completely illogical. Jeff just told me I don’t have my act together when it comes to what I blindly believe in the Catholic Church. He just called me a pathetic fool. He said he wasn’t taught the Assumption in Catholic school, so it’s not true. He just said the Roman Catholic Church is a fundamentalist Christian church. I’m trying to counter his argument, but I’m falling short. Would you help me? Thank you. – A.

Answered by Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC

A: Your basic question revolves around the source of Catholic teaching.

The Church relies both on Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition for its teaching.

Sacred Tradition is the oral transmission of truths taught by Christ and the apostles. Without Tradition we wouldn’t even have the New Testament. Before things were written down, they were passed down orally. So Scripture comes out of Tradition. And Tradition helps us to interpret Scripture correctly.

Think of St. Peter on Pentecost morning, when 3,000 people were baptized. What did St. Peter rely on when preaching to the crowds? Did he quote from the New Testament? The New Testament wouldn’t even be compiled for a few centuries. Rather, St. Peter drew on Tradition — what he received by word of mouth from Christ and by what he witnessed.

As for the Assumption: this was a belief widely held in the early Church, long before it was declared a dogma in 1950.

One bit of evidence for Mary’s assumption was that there was never any record of her tomb. If she had died and had been buried, there certainly would have been pilgrimages to her tomb, such as with other great saints.

(For more reading on the Assumption, see this Catholic Answers posting and this one.)

As to your friend’s insistence on Scripture alone: The idea that only things explicitly mentioned in the Bible are to be believed is contradicted by Scripture itself.

Look at the end of the Gospel according to John: “There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written” (21:25).

We shouldn’t think that those “many other things that Jesus did” were lost for eternity. No! The apostles would have cherished everything Jesus did, and passed on word of those things, either in written form or orally.

And then there is the advice from St. Paul: “Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours” (2 Thessalonians 2:15). Paul is saying explicitly that he passed on teaching both by the written word and by oral statements.

As for the Catholic Church being fundamentalist: that is the last thing anyone usually accuses the Church of being. Fundamentalists tend not to accept Tradition but only the Bible.

Again, we accept both Tradition and Scripture. After all, the written word can’t quite capture all the teachings of Jesus. Our Lord is too deep and mysterious for that.

But getting back to your friend: You might want to pray for him. He seems to be wrestling with something beyond just his doubts about the Assumption.

Keep learning more with Ask a Priest

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Today’s secular world throws curve balls at us all the time. AskACatholicPriest is a Q&A feature that anyone can use. Just type your question HERE and you will get a personal response back from one of our priests at RCSpirituality. You can ask about anything – liturgy, prayer, moral questions, current events… Our goal is simply to provide a trustworthy forum for dependable Catholic guidance and information. So go ahead and ask your question…

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God is Faithful | A Regnum Christi Retreat Guide on Mary's Assumption with Fr. John Bartunek, LC

God Is Faithful: A Retreat Guide on Mary’s Assumption Into Heaven

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, 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).

Video

Audio

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Alex Kucera

Atlanta

Alex Kucera has lived in Atlanta, GA, for the last 46 years. He is one of 9 children, married to his wife Karmen, and has 3 girls, one grandson, and a granddaughter on the way. Alex joined Regnum Christi in 2007. Out of the gate, he joined the Helping Hands Medical Missions apostolate and is still participating today with the Ghana Friendship Mission.

In 2009, Alex was asked to be the Atlanta RC Renewal Coordinator for the Atlanta Locality to help the RC members with the RC renewal process. Alex became a Group Leader in 2012 for four of the Atlanta Men’s Section Teams and continues today. Running in parallel, in 2013, Alex became a Team Leader and shepherded a large team of good men.

Alex was honored to be the Atlanta Mission Coordinator between 2010 to 2022 (12 years), coordinating 5-8 Holy Week Mission teams across Georgia. He also created and coordinated missions at a parish in Athens, GA, for 9 years. Alex continues to coordinate Holy Week Missions, Advent Missions, and Monthly missions at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Cumming, GA.

From 2016 to 2022, Alex also served as the Men’s Section Assistant in Atlanta. He loved working with the Men’s Section Director, the Legionaries, Consecrated, and Women’s Section leadership teams.

Alex is exceptionally grateful to the Legionaries, Consecrated, and many RC members who he’s journeyed shoulder to shoulder, growing his relationship with Christ and others along the way. He knows that there is only one way, that’s Christ’s Way, with others!