Gate of Heaven: Reflections on Mary, the Mother of God

Matthew Becklo

Matthew Becklo is a husband and father, writer and editor, and the Publishing Director for Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. He is the author of The Way of Heaven and Earth: From Either/Or to the Catholic Both/And. He has also contributed essays for Wisdom and Wonder: How Peter Kreeft Shaped the Next Generation of Catholics and The New Apologetics: Defending the Faith in a Post-Christian Era, and edited multiple books, including The Holy Hour: Meditations for Eucharistic Adoration and the Flannery O’Connor Collection. His writing is featured at Word on Fire, National Catholic Register, Catholic World Report, and Aleteia, and has also appeared in Inside the Vatican magazine and the Evangelization & Culture journal, and online at Forbes Magazine, First Things, RealClear Religion, and the Catholic Herald. He lives in New York with his wife, Elizabeth, and their four children.

Sally Read

Sally Read is an award-winning poet whose first collection since her conversion from atheism to Catholicism, Dawn of this Hunger, was the fruit of her ten-year tenure as poet in residence at the Hermitage of the Three Holy Hierarchs. Sally’s poetry has been recorded for the UK’s Poetry Archive, and her writing, in both poetry and prose, has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies, including The Times Literary Supplement, The Picador Book of Love Poems, and Forward’s Poems of the Decade. Her poetry has also been featured on BBC Radio, and episodes of her Radio Maria England show, “Poetry for the Season,” are available on Spotify.

Since her conversion, Sally has written lyrics for the sacred music of Paul Flynn, and their songs have been performed by The Palestrina and Trinity College Chapel Choirs in Dublin. Sally has also written two books of nonfiction, Night's Bright Darkness and Annunciation: A Call to Faith in a Broken World, the latter of which was the subject of a short film by Norman Servais for EWTN Great Britain. Sally’s work has been translated in five languages. Her literary memoir, The Mary Pages, is newly released from Word on Fire.

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.