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| LESSONS LEARNED — Cathy Steffes, a member of Shepherd of the Hills Parish, Eden, credits her Catholic elementary school education with her return to the Catholic faith. After a 20-year absence, Steffes returned to the Catholic Church because of the faith foundation she received at Sacred Heart Elementary School in Fond du Lac. (Catholic Herald photo by Sam Arendt) |
EDEN — Never underestimate your decision for Catholic education for your children, says Cathy Steffes, a parishioner at Shepherd of the Hills Parish in Eden. She speaks from experience: after 20 years away, Steffes is now a faithful Catholic who credits her return to the church to the solid foundation in the faith she received in her eight years at Sacred Heart Elementary School in Fond du Lac.
Steffes was in the first class of first graders at Sacred Heart. She went on to attend public high school, and had no desire at the time to continue in the Catholic faith. Even so, “our parents made us go to church every Sunday,” she said of herself, her brother and her sister.
When she was 18, her parents moved to her mother’s home state of Louisiana. Steffes stayed in Fond du Lac.
“As soon as they left,” she said, “I stopped going to church.”
Shortly after her parents left, Steffes got married and gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Wendy. The church still had some draw for her — however slight at that point in her life — and Steffes brought her daughter to be baptized.
“But my next daughter, Kim, wasn’t baptized until she was in her 20s,” said Steffes.
What happened between those times?
Steffes married a man named Tony, who, like her, was born and raised Catholic. They tried going to several churches together, but didn’t find a community in which they felt at home, and gradually stopped trying.
“We were looking for something,” Steffes said, “and we found places that helped, but didn’t really sustain us.”
Looking back, she said, she now sees why: “Jesus said he is the Living Bread, and without this Bread, there was no real nourishment (in some of these communities).”
All the while she had an aching inside, but didn’t know for what. Until, she said, she heard in a homily the explanation that this ache was a yearning for God’s presence, put there by God in order to draw the soul to God.
About the same time, her brother came for a visit from Louisiana.
“My brother never really left the faith, although he made the rounds exploring other (traditions), such as Baptist and non-denominational groups, ” she said. Steffes said the priority he put on devotional practices even while on vacation, including taking time for adoration and Mass, made an impression on her.
One Sunday in 1997, she said she got up and decided to go to church.
“Tony asked ‘why?’” she said.
She didn’t really know why herself, and didn’t know how to answer, so she told him somewhat jokingly: “Someone has to pray for this family!”
She would routinely ask her daughters, who were by now out on their own, to join her.
“All of a sudden, one daughter was there. Then the other,” said Steffes.
On Father’s Day of that year, she said, Wendy whispered to her from the end of the pew, “Mom, move down.” Steffes looked up to see Tony coming to join them.
“Without the solid foundation of faith I had received in Catholic school, I don’t know if I’d have returned,” she said.
She could only speculate on whether Tony and Wendy would have returned themselves, and whether Kim would still have entered the Catholic Church through the RCIA process, as she did in the late 1990s.
Now, Sunday Mass is a priority in Steffes family. She, Tony, her daughters and their families attend Mass together, and then go for breakfast.
Steffes, whose family owns a construction company, tries to give children the same foundation in the Catholic faith she received as a child. She teaches fifth graders in her parish’s religious education program.
She called it the most important 75 minutes she has each week.
“It might be the only time these kids talk about God,” she said.
She said the challenge is to keep their attention.
“I remember some advice I received years ago (regarding teaching to this age group): you have to change things every five minutes, like a commercial,” she said.
Steffes said she uses interactive classroom activities, encourages full participation of all students, and keeps things moving.
Steffes also makes it a priority to connect her students with the life of their parish.
“Whatever we do as a parish, I bring that into the classroom,” she said.
“They’ve taught me patience,” Steffes said of her students. “And especially to think twice before I speak!” she laughed, saying she’s learned well that once you say something to kids, you can’t take it back.
Steffes tries to give her students a solid foundation in the Catholic faith, but she knows the limits of any religious education program. The parents have to live the faith out in the home, she observed, or the children will not take it to heart, no matter the quality of the education they receive. |
