Episode 53: Domestic Church Series - Catechists of the Home and Church

Welcome back to the St.

Louis Parish Podcast.

Today I have Sam and Zoe Massey, a father-daughter duo who have catechist and catechumen experience here at St.

Louis, here to talk about their experience with the program and their domestic church life.

Sam, Zoe, thank you for being on the show.

Thanks for having us.

So, like I said, you have catechist and catechumen experience.

Sam, I wanted to ask what your experience is, what your history with the program is, and if you could just explain your role here at St.

Louis.

Yeah, sure.

Again, thanks for having us.

So we've been parishioners here for a little over four years since we moved up from Florida.

And a couple years ago, I was asked to be a catechist for confirmation.

And I think it was because at the same time Zoe was in public school and she was about to enter year one confirmation.

So this would have been 2023, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah, 23.

And so uh Zoe and I were just frankly very blessed to be sort of a father-daughter pair going through that together.

It was my first time as a catechist.

I um I think frankly, I'd not as well catechized as I would like to be.

And so I didn't know that I was really prepared for that.

But uh Zoe and I went through it together.

She was confirmed uh in October.

Yeah.

And now I'm going through it uh with my son as well, Tommy, who is a first-year catechist.

Or I'm sorry, catechumen.

So it's it's been great.

That's great.

Did you have to do a lot of homework for that first year?

I I did and I still do, honestly.

Uh first of all, uh you know, Father Thompson and Jamie Hickman provide a lot of support.

Miss Miss Reyes, everybody helps.

Uh, we have a really good curriculum through the Ascension curriculum.

Um, but there's so much work I'm appreciating now for someone who's a catechist that they need to do behind the scenes, yeah, not just reading through the curriculum itself, but um frankly, I I listen to a lot of podcasts on the topic of that week or or that lesson, uh, try and do more reading.

So I I mean, in many respects, it's been more sort of catechizing for me than anybody.

And it's it's I've just been incredibly grateful for it because I've always the things I've wanted to always know more about and understand better, and this has been kind of the the sort of the the engine and the motivation to do that.

Right.

Yeah, that's very cool.

Yeah, Zoe, what about you?

Um, like what homework have I had to do?

Or well yeah, we'll get into that.

Okay.

But well, we know you went through confirmation about three years ago now.

Two, two to three years.

Yeah.

Um I had a great experience.

I loved having my dad as my catechist.

Um I had to be like the Hermione Granger student sometimes because no one else would answer his questions.

Um I don't know.

That was fun though.

Yeah.

That is cool.

I forget which guest it was, but it was something similar.

It was a volunteer who got asked to teach, and he said something very similar.

He was like, uh, well, if I'm gonna teach this stuff, I better like brush off the cobwebs and know what I'm talking about.

And it caused him to live his faith more intentionally because I he's like, I don't want to go up there and tell people to do something that I'm not doing, be a hypocrite that way.

So I think that's a very common theme.

The the teacher gets more catechized than the student in some respects.

100%.

I think I mean it's a very serious responsibility when I take back and think, you know, take a step back and think about it.

I I don't want to teach anything something that's wrong.

Yeah, but I also want to be somewhat inspiring and encouraging for children and their parents to kind of take our faith seriously and take the uh take the sacrament seriously.

So um sometimes it can be a little bit like overwhelming when I think about how serious the responsibility is, but it's also just really fun uh to do it, and it's fun to be there with my kids too.

So do you find that it's a nice way to bond with your kids?

Like you get some extra family time that you maybe wouldn't?

Totally.

That's cool.

Especially, I think, like the for me, the bonding moment I always liked was immediately after class was over, and we'd be getting in the car, and I get some sort of sometimes positive, unsolicited feedback from the kids.

Zoe would tend to be kind of a a good amount with my son Tommy.

He's a little bit more uh quiet, but he'll just be like, you know, nice job, dad.

And that's that's always pretty nice.

Yeah.

Very proud of you.

Yeah, thanks.

That's encouraging.

I was worried you were gonna say the opposite.

Like, no, no, you're a good catechist.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So, what's kind of the impact you've seen in your personal, maybe family life from working through this confirmation program?

It's a really good question.

I I find that I am hopefully a better spiritual leader to my family because, again, we go through a pretty, a very solid curriculum with you know core topics uh that really follow the cat the catechism at the end of the day.

And because I'm diving deeper into each topic, I'm able to share those things sort of in real time over dinner at night or when we have time together in the car.

Um, I think it's not just enriching me and my knowledge of the faith, but and not just Zoe or Tommy who are the catechus, but I think the whole family.

So I think it's been something that helps all of us.

And I think it's really cool saying that you're engaged the way you are, because they I've seen the statistics, or at least I've definitely heard them, where if a father practices their faith, the likelihood of children practicing their faith into adulthood is astronomically higher.

Uh, so I commend you for that.

Second, I also know how busy adult life schedules can be, working full-time, trying to make sure everything else is in order in the house.

So it is a difficult uh maybe it's difficult to say yes to the ask when your parents are like, hey, can you help us out in this way?

Uh just because you're probably all of your time can be taken up doing work-and-home things.

So thank you very much for your time and the effort you put in.

Yeah, thank you.

I think I think that's a good point.

I think for families of children of school age, it can be really challenging when someone asks you to do something additional, right?

It's you're already worried about getting the kids to school in the morning, about picking them up, about getting them to after-school activities, you know, helping them with homework, you know, trying to have a reasonable family dinner every night, all those things, getting getting everyone to bed on time.

It can sometimes be overwhelming when you're asked.

To me, it's been one, I'm just so grateful that I said yes and that I was asked.

But two, it's about to me, like fitting in those really important things in the interstitial moments.

Like again, like we'll be in the car together and something will be on my mind because it's a topic for catechism that week, uh, for for confirmation that week.

And it'll be an opportunity just to talk about it in the car.

And I'm I'm sort of steeped in it because I'm studying about it.

So I think for families who are busy, like uh to me, it's been a reminder that it's okay to fit things in in the in-between moments, and in fact, that's the best time to do it because you've got people's attention and it doesn't necessarily have to be all planned out.

So um, yeah, I've just been really grateful.

That's a great encouragement because it's very easy to we're gonna set aside this block of time and then very easy for that block of time to just get wiped away.

Totally.

But that's good, yeah.

Making use of what was the word you use?

Interstitial moment?

Interstitial time, yeah.

Yeah, in between, like loading into the car or going from church to home, right?

The eight minutes that is not slotted for an activity, but you can make productive.

Yeah, cool.

So, what do you guys like to do at home as a family?

Um we like to read together.

He's read the Lord of the Rings to me and my brother.

Um and we like to I don't know, we like to play risk sometimes when we can.

We get really into it.

These are intense activities.

Yeah.

Risk is risk can be risky to play, I think.

We spent like six hours playing it.

Yeah, it gets intense.

I think puzzles are a thing that we like to do to kind of calm down at the end of the day.

Um another thing I was thinking about this that we do, it's sort of a tradition on the way to mass when we can is we listen to this podcast called Family Mass Prep.

It's it's kind of a to me, going back to the sort of theme of interstitial time, it's like an eight to ten minute podcast, which is perfect for our drive from our house to mass in the morning.

And it's it's geared towards children, younger children, but it kind of, hey, here's the uh here are the readings for today, here's the part of the liturgical season we're in, and it's it's a husband and wife who also have young kids and they're kind of funny, they're kind of a comedy duo.

And so I think that's another thing that we like to do together, and like it just sort of happened naturally, but now it's become sort of a kind of a ritual or a tradition we do every week.

So I like that because I would say the majority of people that live by the parish they go to is about that far away from them.

Yep.

Because I'm thinking about my home parish, yeah, it's about eight to ten minutes, and it's nice that it's from one, like you said, a uh family or parents of of young kids.

And so it's probably a little too simple for the maybe the adults or the older kids, but I think you could still get value out of that.

Honestly, I actually get a lot of value out of it.

It's like a check-in kind of before mass to just prepare yourself.

And sometimes like during the readings, I'll recognize bits and pieces that the podcasters already had gone over.

So it makes our six-year-old laugh, but I think it's still good for you know a 14 year old or even you know a someone a middle aged person like me.

So yeah.

Because you you see things through different lenses as you get older.

Yeah.

So it's like, oh.

I didn't think of that that way.

Totally.

Yeah.

Very cool.

Well, thank you guys very much for your time, and thank you for everything you do here at St.

Louis and what you do at home building up your domestic church.

Yeah.

Thanks for having me.

No problem.