by David Scott, contributor at Inland Catholic
In John 14:6, Jesus teaches us: “I am the way and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Steve Haxton readily confesses that it was indeed through our Lord Jesus that he came to know God our Father … and that it was through his wife and their five children – four sons and a daughter – that he came to know Jesus and His Church as a Catholic Christian.
Born in Moscow, ID and raised on a farm near Genesee, Steve was baptized as an infant into the nondenominational Genesee Community Church. Along with his older sister and younger brother, Steve attended that church through fifth grade.
“I wasn’t raised in a particularly religious home,” said Steve. “Once in a while my mother took us kids to Sunday School, but my father mostly went to the bar and drank coffee.
“After fifth grade we just never went again … I don’t know why,” Steve continued. “I remember a silver tray of grape juice shot glasses and ‘chicklets’ come by so I asked my mom if I could have communion and she said, ‘Yeah, I guess so,’ or words to that effect. I didn’t even know what it was … a tiny piece of bread and some grape juice.”
Discharged back to civilian life in November 1984 following a four-year enlistment with the United States Air Force, Steve was 22 years of age when he met his future wife Cathy less than one month later while the two were skiing at Schweitzer Ski Resort near Sandpoint.
Exactly one year from that day, December 16th, 1985, Cathy and Steve became husband and wife, and began raising their family, which would eventually grow to five children – Joshua, Derrick, Maria, Peter, and John-Paul – in a small farm house near Moscow.
“Cathy was already Catholic when we met, but we started going to Mass and – in what I can only describe as an inspiration from God – I realized that I had to be Catholic to raise my son Catholic. It wasn’t just a question of my commitment to Cathy; I was also committed to raising my kid Catholic. It just seemed logical to me … it was the right thing to do.”
Steve credits his wife of 39 years as playing “a crucial role in my conversion story.”
Said Cathy: “I have been Catholic my whole life, but I had a spiritual conversion in the late 1980s that really changed the course of my life. My family of origin was very open and outward with our Catholic faith, Steve’s family not so much.”
Today, the Haxton’s five adult children are a living testament to Steve and Cathy’s commitment to God and to raising their family strong in the Catholic faith.
Eldest son Joshua is a seminarian studying for the priesthood; Derrick is an aircraft mechanic like his father and at this writing experiencing his own conversion back into the Catholic faith; and Maria is a designated crisis responder and active member of her church in Post Falls, ID. Son Peter is studying architecture and regularly attends Sacred Heart Parish in Tekoa; youngest child John-Paul recently enlisted in the USAF and was undergoing basic training in boot camp at the time of this writing.
“I may not have been the best Catholic dad to my kids when they were growing up, but all five are practicing Catholics in adulthood and for that I am extremely grateful,” Steve said. “Before John-Paul left for basic training I told him a lot of things, but the one thing I told him many, many times was to keep going to Mass.”
As their children grew, Steve, Cathy, and the children prayed together as a family, said grace together before meals, talked about Mass every Sunday, and discussed “the importance of communion: what it actually is … the real presence of our Lord; that is exceptionally important to us,” Steve explained.
Said Steve: “Jesus explicitly said, ‘This is my body, this is my blood.’ It’s in every version of the Bible. We are literally at the Last Supper in Mass, we’re there! At every Mass I picture myself at that table with those guys (the Apostles) when Jesus says those words and I pray He helps all of us to be aware of His presence in the Eucharist as so many don’t believe that. That’s my prayer.”
Since his confirmation into the Catholic faith, Steve – while serving with the Air National Guard – had plenty of opportunities to pray that others hear the voice of Christ and experience the transforming grace of the Eucharist. He has worshipped at Mass in Hungary, Germany, Normandy France, Thailand, Egypt, Japan, Spain, Italy, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, and throughout much of America.
“It’s funny,” Steve noted, “but in Saudi Arabia you can’t be an open Christian. You can’t tell anyone you’ve been to Mass. Over there, during the buildup for Desert Storm, we had to hide that. Mass is celebrated in a darkened room under threat of death, and yet they play Christmas music over the public address systems at the malls because they don’t know it’s Christian music. It’s crazy.”
While Steve described his wife as “a crucial part of my conversion story,” Cathy characterized her husband as “a man who embraced (Catholicism). I’ve never seen him embrace anything like he did the Church. It enveloped him, he embraced everything about it.”
That faith, dedication, and devotion has not wavered or waned over the years, said Cathy, who shared, “I’ve seen at different times in Steve’s life where in difficult situations he clings to God, in which he is more open, where he ardently seeks out God’s will.”
But it’s not only in difficult times that her husband turns to God, Cathy explained. “Steve prays every day and he does his daily readings. For him, following the Catholic way … how we do things … to him, that is the most important thing. He lives his faith.”
And it is this daily living of the Catholic Christian faith and way of life, Cathy said, that has set the example and had such a profound influence on their five children.
“We raised our children, but we still live in a very Catholic home and we are still very much a Catholic family,” Cathy stated. “We said our nightly prayers with the children when they were growing up and now that they’re on their own we still say our nightly prayers and consecrations. We do that for them when they’re not here and with them when they are.”
Daughter Maria credited both her parents for her own unwavering Catholic faith and said it was her father’s “logical and rational” approach to- and understanding of Catholic teaching and tradition that “spoke to me.”
“I was born after my dad converted so I only know him as loving and strong in his faith,” said Maria. “Kids always follow the dad and he knew we were watching him so he always set the example as a man of dignity and respect. My dad also emphasized with us kids the apostolic succession, that the Church is the undeniable repository of truth. That made sense to me.”
Steve’s commitment to living the Catholic faith also left its impression on the Haxton’s four boys, Cathy said. “Our boys look up to their father,” she noted. “They want to be like their dad in so many ways and that speaks to how Steve has modeled our Catholic faith. He just couldn’t have been a better role model of a Catholic husband or a better model of the faith than what he has been for our children.”
Just as each of us comes to the Father only through His Son our Lord Jesus, so too did the Lord call Steve Haxton to lead his children to the Father through the Son via the sacrament of marriage and the blessing of fatherhood.
Steve Haxton is a man who believes in not just professing his Catholic convictions, but a man who ardently strives to live and model his faith as a father and in his everyday life outside the home.
“As an aircraft mechanic I have to be perfect in everything I do,” he said. “But, that’s really what we should all be doing … striving to be perfect like Christ. We all falter, but we all should be striving to be like Christ all the time.”