Hey there, readers! I hope your Advent has been going great and you are ready for Christmas! The Bennett family is certainly excited!
It’s that Sunday of the month when I get to put the spotlight on a modern Catholic married couple here on the blog. It’s one of my favorite parts of this blog! While we can learn so much from married Saints, sometimes it’s also helpful to get the perspective of people living right here and now in our modern world. People who are trying to become Saints themselves day by day along this difficult, crazy, wonderful vocational path we call marriage!
Some of my Spotlight Couples have been people I have known all my life, and some I have never actually met in real life. The Lasnoskis fit into this second group. I “met” Cait and Kent Lasnoski because I basically stalked them after I found about their book, ‘30 Days with Married Saints.’ It caught my attention right from the title because it’s on a very similar topic to my own book. I read the whole thing in about two days (oops- I’ll have to go back and do it again in 30 days, reading it more as a devotional!), then searched out the authors online. Turns out, they’re pretty amazing, and I can’t wait to share their story with you all today!
1. Tell us your story.
We first met when visiting colleges as high school seniors. Eventually we both decided on the same one, and Cait was the only person Kent knew at school as an entering freshman. We quickly developed a friendship through interdenominational Christian fellowship, Bible studies, praise and worship evenings, and by attending Mass together.
Coming from nominal Catholic backgrounds, we researched and prayed about Catholicism—should we stay with the Church? Through that process we discovered two things: 1) We love the beauty of the tradition and teaching of the Catholic Church and believed that it held the fullest truth of the various Christian denominations and 2) We are good partners for each other. Our decision to get married was tied to our decision to remain Catholic. We felt a vocation to be part of a renewal in the doctrine and practice of Catholic marriage. We’d fallen in love with the beauty of its teaching and wanted to share that teaching with those already married and those approaching the Sacrament.
We got married at the end of our senior year of college and moved so that Kent could pursue his PhD in Theology with a focus on marriage. During his studies, we welcomed three children into our lives and lost two to heaven. Kent got his first teaching job at a Catholic college in Illinois where we welcomed 3 more children into our family and formally began the task of educating them.
After a few years, God called us to Wyoming where we currently live. Kent teaches at Wyoming Catholic College and Cait continues to teach those six children plus three more! In between all that, Kent has authored a scholarly book, Vocation to Virtue, discussing how poverty, chastity, and obedience relate to the married state. Together we have authored 30 Days with the Married Saints, which is a devotional for married couples. Through it all we have enjoyed helping with marriage preparation and retreats.
2. What do you two enjoy doing together?
We have always enjoyed community outreach together, but what it looks like has changed over the course of our marriage. During our dating, we did soup kitchens in West Philadelphia together. In early marriage, we were youth ministers in an inner city parish in Milwaukee. Eventually, though, as our number of children increased we have had to direct our outreach into more home-centered endeavors together: Having marriage -prep couples to our home, inviting college groups over to read Shakespeare or talk about Theology, and of course working together to raise and educate our nine children.
We also love to be physically active together and as a family: We play frisbee and soccer, do triathlons, and, living in the mountains of Wyoming, love to hike with our whole family. We also enjoy reading books together or one after another so we can converse about them.
3. What does your domestic church look like?
We have a fairly consistent daily routine. We share a family breakfast, which ends with praying lauds (morning prayer). After morning school, at lunch, the family prays the Angelus. During rest time, children and parents do spiritual reading (lives of saints, Imitation of Christ, etc.). Before bed we gather for evening prayer, which is perhaps the most varied form of prayer for us. We introduce a breadth of devotions like the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, rosary, vespers (evening prayer), praise and worship, chant, prayers from the extraordinary and ordinary forms of Mass, prayers of petition and thanksgiving. No child goes to bed without a blessing from Papa.
4. What is a trial you have faced in your marriage?
In our marriage, like in all marriages, various issues have arisen when it comes to our communications. Especially lately, with teenagers running here and there and toddlers and infants not sleeping, and all the children in the middle still needing us, time to communicate with each other has been hard to find. Sure, we easily find time to talk about who needs to go where or what is on the schedule and such, but time to really catch up with each other, address our own deeper needs and assist each other with them, and discuss and address the deeper needs of our children is hard to come by unless we are intentional about it.
Because of this, we’ve instituted a Wednesday night “Navigators” meeting- as we are the navigators of this family and need to steer it towards heaven. Wednesday evenings are reserved for us to talk about the important things that need to be addressed: problems we have been having personally, spiritually, with each other, or with our children. We also do longer term planning and visioning during these evenings. This has helped us to stay on the same page, not bring up issues we’re having at inappropriate times and also not keep pushing things under the rug because we don’t have time for them. We also try to go to Mass and/or Adoration together when we can for similar reasons. Mass with 9 children between us in the pews is not the same sort of spiritual togetherness we have when it is just the two of us.
5. What advice would you give to a newlywed couple?
A few pieces of advice for newly married couples: Be fruitful and intentional! Don’t put off being open to life and work together to be fruitful spiritually in whatever other ways God may be calling you to be. If you haven’t yet, discuss and pray about just why God has called you TWO together and what He is calling you for together. No spouse left behind: If God is calling one of you to something, discuss it and embark on it together!
6. As it is December, we are focusing on the ideal married couple- Sts. Mary and Joseph. How do these beautiful Saints inspire you in your marriage?
St. Joseph inspires us as he is a man who simply listens to God’s voice and does it. Boom. He gets a message from God, and he just goes and obeys. In Scripture he says no words; his actions speak loudly enough. He leads his family towards the Lord.
St. Mary, of course, is a model of humility and thoughtfulness. Whereas Joseph is more active, Mary is contemplative- she “kept all these things in her heart.” This balance of action and contemplation in the Holy Family shows us the balance we need in our family and also helps us to recognize and embrace the differences in each other and how they can balance one another out to lead ourselves and our family to the Lord. The balance of Sts. Mary and Joseph perfectly embody this time of Advent: contemplative anticipation and active preparation for the coming of our King.
Thank you so much for sharing, Cait and Kent!
You are so wise and have gone through so much together, intentionally and prayerfully. I especially love the idea of a “Navigators Meeting,” and I think we are going to have to start up a similar practice here at casa Bennett.
If YOU would like to be a future Spotlight Couple, send me a message on Facebook or Instagram, or comment below!
