The Dominus Project

Episode 10: A Family on a Mission - Part 2 with Steven and Mauree Brooksher

Dr. Brian Pedraza:  

Hello, friends, welcome back to Holy Habits in the House.

This is the last episode of the season, and we are so blessed because we're going to be thinking about, as the second part of a two-part series, a family being on a mission and the mission we're thinking about is evangelization. My name is Dr. Brian Pedraza, Professor of Theology at FranU and the Director of the Dominus Project, and sitting to my right is the Man, the Myth, the Legend, the Golden Shoes on the dance floor. Hey, Father Josh!

Father Josh Johnson: Hey dog, how are you?  

Dr. Brian Pedraza:  I'm doing great, man. John Chrysostom was known as the Golden Mouth, but you are the Golden Shoes.  

Father Josh: David had it first, right? David danced before the Lord. Mark and I say keep a Herman continuity going, but I'm joined today by not only one best friend, Dr. Brian Pedraza, but two of the best evangelists that I know.  

You are lay disciples of Jesus Christ, Stephen & Mauree Brooksher. I've known y'all for a long time. I knew Steven before I was in the seminary, as a high school student, because he was a youth minister. I met Mauree when they began to date and were married. I baptized your babies, done a lot of Sacraments with y'all, and now your parishioners of Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is such a gift to have you all in the community, but before we start talking about the Gospel and the mission that you have embraced as a family, because your whole family, like, you are all a mission. I want to know about the the initial drip.  

And you're like, what does that mean, Father Josh? I want to know who spoke game to who first, and how did it go down, because y'all are a holy couple, so who was it?  

Mauree Brooksher: Am I supposed to answer?  

Father Josh:  You got it, I think Steven is being shy, I don’t remember seeing him shy before. He's like, his body was like. “Oh, my gosh, I thought this was about Jesus, not us, what's going on?  It’s going to be a good story, I can tell.  

Mauree Brooksher:  Gosh, and I have to make this short. Steven was working at St. Aloysius when we met and he was the youth minister and I was starting to help out with the youth group because I was in graduate school and I think we knew that we were interested in one another, but he was nervous to put that on display because you have a lot of youth groupers who are watching every move you make.  

I was a big runner in graduate school, and he knew that, and we actually lived down the street from one another. So, he would call me in the afternoons, I'm a very planned person and I had already run at five in the morning, and he would call me at four in the afternoon and say, “would you like to go run?”   I'm like, sure, but I couldn't tell him I’d run already that morning. It also became a thing of, like, I think he's trying to ask me on a date, but he's asking me to run.  

Dr. Pedraza: How much training did you have to do to keep up?  

Steven Brooksher: What was funny, because she had already run, since she ran in the morning, I remember thinking, she's kind of slow!   Like, you know, I didn't know that she had been running every morning beforehand, she didn't tell me that and you know who introduced us first.

Father Josh: Jenny Morales, tried to play matchmaker with y'all, that's right and it worked.  

Mauree Brooksher:  Officially our first date, I did invite him to a wedding because I needed a date to a wedding out of town and so he had not officially, like, asked me on a date. So, I did.

Father Josh: How long were y'all running together before you asked him on this first date?  

Mauree Brooksher:  Okay. So, the first time he asked me, officially, it was actually really sweet. He knew I loved Mother Teresa, and he invited me to go to mass the day she was canonized. There was a mass at St. Agnes. Yes, that was September 5, is that right?  

Dr. Pedraza: Nice date!

Mauree Brooksher:   I might have her date wrong, but anyways, he did invite me to that.  

Father Josh: Did you hold hands during the Our Father?

Steven Brooksher:  Probably. Yeah.

Mauree Brooksher: Eventually, it was more like, okay, we're dating and not just a running buddy.  

Father Josh: Did y'all go lunch after mass as well?  

Steven Brooksher:  There's an evening mass, and yes, we did go to dinner after. Yeah. Yeah.  

Father Josh: And now look at y'all. How many kids later? Four? Four kids later and it's an awesome couple... that's amazing.  

Mauree Brooksher:  That's a long story to answer a simple question.  

Dr. Pedraza: I mean, how do you all know each other? “We're running partners!” that’s great!

Steven Brooksher: Well, you know, when we first met, Jenny Morales was helping, was the youth minister at Aloysius. Jenny ran the confirmation program and Mauree was Nanny for the Morales’, that's another Holy spirit moment, because she only connected with them because of a good friend of hers from high school who was their Nanny beforehand. When she got started in grad school at LSU, they were looking for somebody and she just happened to be in the right place at the right time. It was after she came back from teaching on the North Shore in Mandeville. It was really the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit was at work and connecting all those little pieces.  

Father Josh:  Now we're all reunited  

Dr. Pedraza: Father, speaking of running, do you know who we should be running to all the time?  

Father Josh:  Jesus!  

Dr. Pedraza:  Jesus, I know that, but I was like... what, but I just saw it floating. I was like, I'm going to grab that!

With this episode, we are really thinking about evangelization and one of the passages from scripture that's been feeding us, and we’ve been thinking about it, is the beginning of First John and it's John, so he's an apostle. he is the one who experienced Jesus so intimately and personally, right? The one who lays his head on the Lord's chest at the last supper, really, incredible relationship that he had being in Jesus’ inner circle of friends. Then he starts out his first letter saying, “this person, that we've seen, we've heard, we've touched, that I lived with for three years, saw him do these amazing things, I HAVE TO proclaim him to you now or else my joy will not be complete!”  

I love that line from the beginning of First John, it's necessary for my joy to be complete that you would come and share in this union that I have with the Lord.  

We're wondering, when it comes to you all as a married couple, the ways in which you're thinking about making your joy complete, within the home, especially, and then is there a way your family starts doing that together outside of the home. Maybe let's start within the home. First. What does it look like to try and bring your kids and the people that are coming into your home, to bring them into this communion, so your joy could be complete.  

Mauree Brooksher:  I love that you're bringing out the word joy. I've shared before that I want our children to know that the Catholic Faith is a joyful faith because I think, oftentimes, there's a misconception that it's so formal and so many rules and yes, it's formal, yes, there's beautiful rules that have purpose, but that's to bring about joy. One way I think is teaching our children that our faith is joyful, that it's always celebrating something. Today is the feast of St. Justin, that's our uncle's name, his name is Justin!  It's a way to remember him and to learn about the Saints and where he was from and what he did and that's something very joyful!  OR, we're remembering your baptism day and talking about that memory, who baptized you and how joyful that day was, why was it joyful?  

Father Josh:  And they get an extra party on that day like a birthday party?  

Mauree Brooksher:  Yes. What do you want for dessert tonight? We try, when we're not in the middle of a renovation, to light a special candle and to re live that in addition to their birthday. That's one way we start with the children, is that teaching them that the faith is always celebrating something daily, and what is it, and it's not just about the rules we have to follow, it's so much more than that.  

Father Josh Johnson: That sounds like it's a liturgical living that you're doing as well, you're connecting what's happening in the liturgical calendar into your home calendar.  

Mauree Brooksher:  Right. Right. Absolutely. In line today first Saturday. We try when we're in a good rhythm, this is a special Saturday. This is a special Saturday of the month because we might go to mass on Saturday instead of Sunday, might also receive a different sacrament. We'll go to confession today. So, I think celebrating the pieces of our faith to make it very joyful so that when they get older, they want to do those things as well.  

Steven Brooksher:  And she does a wonderful job of setting a rhythm in the family life of faith intertwined throughout every piece of who we are as a family. There's a program that she finds all kind of stuff and there's a thing called Catholic All Year and they have a calendar and they have this is mom in California, but she has all the feast days and there's activities that kids can participate in every month, depending on what's happening that month within the Catholic Calendar. I do think that's something that we really are intentional about.

I think for me, you know, a lot of the intentionality that I put into it is just really making sure that we're having those conversations about faith with our children throughout their daily life. One of the things we try to have is intentional time together as a family. She's really good about making sure that we're not overcommitted. She's going to say it's hard, but she's going to say, we have too many things going on. We're not going to go to that soccer game today because we've already been to two and Sunday is time for family.

Or, we have enough activities, we have not eaten dinner together as a family. We're going to do that, and this is going to be our focus. I appreciate that because I can get carried away with the hustle and bustle, but at dinnertime, talking about where we saw God's presence in the day, just being verbal with my kids about my faith and what's important to me about that and sharing that with them at different points in their age? I don’t miss an opportunity every single night to talk to them and pray with them at night and then every single morning to give them a blessing before they go on the bus or before we drop them off. I think little things throughout the day and just making sure they understand how important it is.  

I just love, Christopher, my 13-year-old, he picks up on it and he'll be like Papa, he'll be out on the streets and say, “Papa, do you think that person's Catholic or do you think that person has a faith? Should we talk to them about this or that about faith?” He sees, he's watching and seeing what we are trying to model, and then he's thinking about it as well!  

Father Josh: But you've also invited him on mission as well. You've done mission trips all over the world, especially, one thing I appreciate about your family, so much! He(Steven) brought mission to our Diocese, to our own land throughout the Diocese of Baton Rouge, you've done it in Vacherie Louisiana, did it in, I think Napoleonville area? Now you're doing it right here in Mid-City and Sacred Heart boundaries.  We're so grateful, but Christopher is coming to serve the poor in Mid City, but he's also gone with you for mission, too. He's like, he's lived like you do it, but you invite your kids to do it with you as well, which is so important.

Steven Brooksher; I think that, a lot of times, people might say, well, I don't know what to do or how do I help? Well, we have to get in there with if we want to share our faith with our family, we have to get in there and participate in that. I love when Pope Francis said, “If we're going to minister to the sheep, we have to smell like the sheep.” I think that that's been something I've taken with me at every stage in my children's lives. Okay, this is time for me to get involved in this way to make sure, whether bringing Christopher on a mission, with Fraternus, I'm going to be involved because this is the stage of life that my children are in.  With the younger ones, making sure that we're focused on having the conversations with Annabeth, while she's going through her first communion and her first reconciliation this past year and talking with her intentionally and meeting her.  

Each one of our children is just so different and trying to meet them where they are and having that intentional time with them, but having faith be a part of that time.  

Dr. Pedraza:  I love what you are doing, in terms of having your kids see you do something and then do it with you! One of the things that we've discovered is that parents really apprentice their kids in a way of life. Often, we think of faith solely as a cognitive endeavor, break out the textbook, you've got to memorize this and like, okay, good, you got it.

Really, if Christianity is the way, like it was talked about in the New Testament, not only does it include these really important intellectual things, but it's got to be lived out in our flesh, it’s got to become incarnational. You speaking reminded me of this family that I knew growing up, where they were a missionary family, and I remember the mom telling me, “Don't think that your kids can't be evangelists!  When we're out in mission, if the only thing my kid could do was make the sign of the cross, I would say, go gather all the kids, show them how to make the sign of the cross!”  

One of the surest ways to grow deep roots of the faith in your heart is to give it away to other people. I'm loving that!  Are there more ways in which you are trying to bring your kids along with you, so that you can do ministry together.

Steven Brooksher: I was thinking of an example in my second child, Margaret Jane, she's 11, she's very strong, she's got a very strong personality and knows what she likes and dislikes, but she's also very sensitive. We were at church a few years ago and there was a poor person sitting behind us that maybe had a deformity or smelled, there was something and it upset her, and she was like, “Papa, I don't want to give that person a sign of peace, it makes me uncomfortable.”

This was a kind of a lesson to me; This time is an opportunity for me to bring her around somebody that makes her uncomfortable and see that she can see Jesus in them.

As the Holy Spirit would have it, we did a program at my office that year, where we did a drive to help some families for Christmas and I took the children with me.   One of the children of the family we were helping had been burned and her face was scarred, and I remember Margaret Jane telling me, “That scares me.” and I said, she's just a child like you, she's your age. We went and brought the presents, and we were intentional, it was important to me that we were intentional about spending time with that family, so I told the kids, go play with the kids. I just let them go play with this ladies children, and I spent some time talking with the mom and by the end of the time, I could see that Margaret Jane's perspective had changed and she saw that the child was just like her and she loved that child, probably a little bit younger than her.

Then I came to appreciate, it's those little moments that led Margaret Jane to have a desire to really love on younger children, no matter what they looked like.  She now has a little bit of a passion for watching out for the little ones.  It was a teaching moment for me as well, how important it is to bring our children into...sometimes we try to protect them so I think, I can't bring them to this environment or that environment because it's not perfect or set up, but those environments, where we help our children to encounter those in need, to serve with us, are great moments of learning  as to what God calls us to.  

We took some of them to Missionaries of Charity maybe a month or two ago, and I brought the little ones Annabeth and Christopher, and they just jumped right in, and it was a great lesson for them of why we do that, what's important about it, and the impact. Annabeth sat in my lap, and we talked to some people that were homeless, and we spent time with them and those things are so important to do within family.  

Father Josh:  And after you do that activity, Mauree do you unpack that with them when they get home during dinnertime?

Mauree Brooksher:  Yes, processing it, what was hard?  What were the parts of it that were hard for you, Margarite Jane. That's been a big one for her, is talking about that because she knows what she's supposed to do, but it's hard to see when people are hurting and suffering. We say, we know it's hard for you because you care so much, but you have to be able to get in there. You know. Processing it!  

I think another way to try to bring it along is these great examples that he's giving, but also to, I find at home, because I'm bothered by it but it's coming from a place that I want my children as they get older, to always be looking for ways of how they could be helping. So, at home, yes, we could be having a day where we're doing absolutely nothing, but let's look for ways that you can help around the house. Even bringing these big moments into your role as a sister or a brother at home and how you can help.  

And how they spend their time, because I want them, when they leave the house to not be like, okay, I don't have anything to do today, I can just play on my phone and do absolutely nothing. No, look for ways to serve.  

Dr. Pedraza: One of the things that I love about what you all just said about your daughter is that you're encouraging her reflectiveness because some parents would be scared to be like, you're not supposed to think that or whoa, cut that conversation, no, you don't say that about people,.  When really, if you're apprenticing your child, no, what was your authentic thoughts, tell me and let me see if I can help you work through that and see where the Lord really was at. That's so beautiful to have that authenticity.  

Father Josh:  As parents, you are an image of God for your kids, because you're able to receive them and sit with them in the midst of the ongoing formation, which is messy. That's going to show them, well, God also can sit with me in this as well. God's not going to reject me or punish me if I tell God what I authentically feel or think about this particular experience and so, you really are being an image of the Lord for your kids.  

Dr. Pedraza: One thing that I'm thinking about, for a lot of families who are going to be watching this, they might say something like this because I've felt this before at different times of my life.  Am I supposed to go evangelized, come on. That's for Father to do!  You're like, I'm not an evangelist, we're messed up, if you knew what our family life is like, you wouldn’t be telling me that I'm supposed to be the light of the world.  

What would you all say to families who are like, that's scary to think about us being on a mission? How would you encourage that?  

Mauree Brooksher:  The one thing that comes to mind is that for 12 years, I worked in prenatal postpartum fitness, and I think of evangelization, it doesn't just mean going and using your words and proclaiming your words, but it’s how you're serving.  So, I felt that time was very spiritual for me, yes, it was my work that I definitely felt called to help moms in the prenatal and postpartum period and with that came always looking beyond.  

Yes, my first focus was to teach them a great workout in a great fitness class, but evangelization came when I'm learning about each of those moms. Some of them had miscarriages, some of them had birthed a stillborn baby. I attended a baby's funeral who only lived for a few hours. So that, to me, was evangelization and showing my children that we bring mom's meals, whether they're on bed rest or whether they just had a baby, and it's a very joyful experience.  

I think evangelization is just teaching your children that if you're not called to be a priest or you're not called to be a nun, you are called to be a lay person or a mom and a dad, whatever work you're called to do, there's evangelization in that, and it's just loving people. It doesn't mean using words, per se, but being Christ to them. That's what comes to mind, to me, is just teaching my children evangelization is about how you're serving and loving people who need support versus having scripture perfectly memorized, because I don't!

You can still evangelize, doing your job.  Work is so much more than the simple task at hand, so much more than just teaching the fitness class.  

Steven Brooksher: You know, we're all on a mission. So, whose mission are we on, right? And so, if we are on God's mission, are we doing God's work? Are we trying to follow God's mission for us, or are we doing something in the world? Is my mission to make money, is my mission to be happy and find happiness based on what the world is calling me to do? Is it my mission, or who am I serving? We're all serving something, whether it's ourselves or a goal that we have. So, I think to take some of that away, being on mission in faith is just to say my goal is to serve God, my purpose is to work on building God's Kingdom, where he's calling me to build. I think the intimidation factor of that is like, what if he calls me to do something, I don't know how to do it? Well, he's going to provide what I need. He always does. I think the reality is just being comfortable with the fact that we each have a piece to play and in trusting that.  

For me, with mission, it has to start with my own personal relationship with Christ. I have learned that I'm not very effective unless I'm consistent about my own prayer life and I'm consistently connected to the Eucharist. So, what I need, and I have to be disciplined about, is my personal prayer time every day. On top of that, how frequently am I receiving Jesus and the Eucharist and how frequently am I bringing myself into the discipline of going to daily mass where I'm receiving the word of God. I'm hearing and sharing with the community, and I'm receiving the body and blood of Christ.  

That gives me the grace of the Holy Spirit and the openness to be able to hear what he's calling me to do in small and sometimes larger ways depending on what that day holds.

It's a daily choice. I have to work in just an hourly choice. Am I going to be a vessel or an instrument at this moment or am I going to be focused on something else?

Father Josh:  Abiding.  You are abiding in the Lord, and the fruit of your abiding is manifested in two very different ways, but both very effective ways. This wraps up our season and I'm brought back to two things. One is Jesus, before he sent the Apostles out to teach, preach and make Disciples, the very first mandate that he gave to them was to sit watch and a pray. It was the fruit of their time in prayer and the acts of the apostles that led them to then go out and in unique ways share Jesus to different people, in different ways they were all able to receive and perceive. So, one of the things you said earlier, Mauree was about the structure and the discipline of saying no, of having a calendar of what's going on in your life. I think that for us to be able to be affective evangelists in the unique ways that God's calling us to go out, families, into our schools, our neighborhoods, our workplace environments, and our communities to share the Joy of the Gospel, by our actions and by our words, we need to be rooted in prayer and disciplined on the calendar.  

For our takeaway, I want to invite all of our families to look at your calendars today as a family. To write down when you're going to spend time with Jesus? Put Him on the calendar! We put that, which is important to us, on the calendar, so put down when am I going to spend time of Jesus on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and not just in church, but in home. And where in the home am I going to a spend this time with Jesus. Then, write down what we're going to do with Jesus. Is it going to be a rosary? Is it going to be scripture? Is it going to be praise and worship? Is it going to be silence? What are we going to do with the Lord? What are we going to do to avoid those distractions that can get in the way like TV or the phone? Then who's going to hold us accountable? Whoever that person is, invite that person to hold us accountable to this disciplined time with the Lord, so that the fruit of our relationship with Christ can be manifested in a number of different ways in our community and in the world.  

Dr. Pedraza: Amen, I like that ...and doing it with that joy. Yes, do it with joy because it's the joy of the Gospel. It's good news.  

Father Josh & Dr. Pedraza:  That's how we form Holy Habits, that's how we form the Holy Habits in the House.  

Father Josh:  Thank you, Jesus, we love you. Amen.

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