The Catholic Journey

By Stacey Vinton

I was not brought up Catholic, but I do remember going to church on Christmas and Easter and occasionally throughout the year. I also remember having some faith formation while in junior high. We learned about a few of the parables, as taught by a Christian church pastor. 

When I met Paul, I wanted to know why he drove 45 minutes one way into town just to go to church and then return home with no trips to any stores. While I was in Lincoln over a summer taking college classes, I attended RCIA with Father Vap and, later that summer, was confirmed into the Church. I was the first Catholic in my immediate family. My mom had some cousins and a good friend who were Catholic, but it was never something I ever thought about doing. A few years after I joined the Church, my mom followed me into the Church. 

While my kids were little, I did what I could to bring them up in the Faith. We went to church as often as we could and they went to CCD on Wednesdays. During the summers, I had them go to Higher Ground, which was difficult to schedule around all the sports camps. But I felt it was important for them to attend and learn things I couldn’t teach them about the Faith. 

When they went on college visits, I was sure to include a stop at the Newman Center as part of the tour. When they came home from college, there was usually a discussion about new things they had learned or about which faith conference they wanted to attend. Their conversations would teach me something and inspire the rest of the family; for example, praying before a meal at restaurants or saying the rosary in the car. Some of these things may be a given for other families but for ours, they were new traditions.

A big increase in my faith life was during the COVID pandemic when we weren’t allowed to go to church. Not being able to attend Mass made me want to go even more. To fill that yearning, I started listening to Called to Communion and Catholic Answers Live and reading books by Matthew Kelly. All of these things helped me to learn as much as I could about the faith. At about the same time, Bible in a Year with Father Mike Schmitz started. I learned even more from this and continue to listen to the podcast. It is so much easier to learn about the Catholic Faith now because of the internet. I try to make good use of all the apps out there now — BIAY, CIAY, iBreviary, Laudate, Pints with Aquinas, Rosary apps and Hallow, to name a few.

In the summer of 2020, Father Matthew Nash came to our parish. He changed daily Mass to a time I could attend, and I started going before work. It has been a great way to start my day. He also offers several different spiritual gatherings for the Sandhills Catholic Churches such as weekly adoration, Holy Hours for vocations and his Summer Spiritual Series. 

Our family continues to grow, as the kids are coming home to live and work on the ranch with their spouses. On Sunday mornings, our family travels together to Mullen for Mass. The trip now includes stops to pick up the different families and grandkids. We sit close to each other at Mass and the grandkids pass around between all of us.

It’s great to see the Faith passed down from my kids to their children. It is wonderful when the aunts and uncles interact with the nieces and nephews. The little ones learn from them too. The grandkids see all of us praying at church during Mass. They take up their offerings for the collection basket and enjoy coffee and rolls. They also like to pray in front of the Blessed Mary with their aunt. It’s a blessing to live out my Catholic Faith with my family. 

By Nathan Vinton

We are sandhillers, and there have been Vintons in Grant and Hooker counties since the 1890s. Because many of the Vintons are ranchers, family histories have largely been tied to specific places. The family branch I belong to was Catholic up through at least four generations. 

    However, being “Catholic” can mean a variety of things. I would say that, growing up, our family were lukewarm catholics. Our family went to Mass most Sundays and us kids had CCD, but we were not much involved besides that. Things like extracurriculars or the ranch would sometimes take precedence over our obligations to the Church. I was just going through the motions a lot of the time.     

    When I went to college, I never stopped going to Mass, but I did live a party lifestyle that opposed my flourishing. In the fall of my sophomore year, I tore my ACL playing pick-up basketball. Much like my confirmation saint, St. Ignatius of Loyola, this leg injury greatly affected me and caused deeper reflection about my purpose in life. I was asked unexpectedly to help lead a bible study at the Newman Center and was living there by the next year. We had a great faith community there, each encouraging and helping each other in prayer and deed. I was able to go to many retreats and daily Mass. We were led by some tremendous priests and religious. I look back on those years with joyful memories. I met some of my greatest friends during that time. The Philosophy Department at Kearney in the early 2010s was also a positive influence in that it showed me a more philosophical understanding of my faith. The capstone of that period of my life was during Totus Tuus for the Grand Island Diocese in the summer of 2016, which was a challenging thing for me because of my natural introvertedness.

    During this time, my family was always supportive and we remained close. I would often come back to help on the ranch, including most summers. But the family, at that point, were still lukewarm to the Faith, as they had been. And so I shared what I could, even though the fear of awkwardness or comfortability with the status quo would sometimes make my efforts less than they should have been. 

    A lot of it was just informing the family of basic church teachings, like that the Eucharist is truly the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, or that Jesus was fully God and fully man. It is an ongoing process, and I am by no means perfect. Perhaps one of the greatest wins I got was convincing my sister Grace to go to Kearney and become involved with the Newman Center there. 

    After undergrad, I went to law school in Lincoln. This was a difficult time for me, partly because of the rigorous academic demands of law school, and partly because the great faith community I had developed in Kearney was hours away. The academic atmosphere of the law school was also more liberal in the classical sense than what I was used to in Kearney. But I had a small group of friends that helped me out and I was able to graduate after three years.

    After that, I worked for a year in a law firm, but, ultimately, through a love of the pastoral life, I decided to come back to the ranch. Four years later, I have grown into my profession as a rancher and am preparing to enter my vocation as a husband and (God-willing) father.

    Returning to the ranch was joyful in some ways, but desolate in others. It was joyful in that I could reconnect with old friends from the area and spend time with my family whom I love. It was desolate in that I was not able to re-create the faith-centered relationships I had in college. 

    Life is an ongoing journey. And although there have been high points and low points on my path, it will never be finished in this world, but only in heaven.    

By Grace Vinton

A fond memory from childhood is when I would stay the night at my Grandma Vinton’s house. I remember picking up fallen walnuts, pulling weeds around her house and eating spaghetti lasagna. At nighttime, in the darkening room, Grandma would sit at the edge of my bed and pray a rosary as I drifted to sleep. At the moment, I didn’t understand why she would sit on my bed with her rosary beads, but now, I admire her devotion to the Virgin Mary and her prayers. 

Growing up, I didn’t put much thought into my Faith. Going to Mass was just something my family would do. I didn’t pay close attention in my catechism classes, so my knowledge of the Faith was limited. Yet, despite my lack of knowledge and lukewarmness, I felt a great peace whenever I was at Mass. From fourth grade until my senior year of high school, it felt like I would serve at almost every weekend Mass. I would try to sit like a statue and not mess up. Little did I know I was in the presence of Jesus. While I had no clue on an intellectual level what was going on, I was drawn to the Mass.

    When I was in high school, I started looking for something more. Remembering when my Grandma Vinton would pray the rosary, I began praying the rosary by following a pamphlet. I felt comforted by Our Lady. Nathan had become active at the Newman Center at UNK, which inspired me to look more into my faith. My brother Samuel and I also decided to attend Higher Ground, where we met more Catholics our age and were gifted Bibles. 

    When I first felt God’s love for me, I was 18 and had the privilege of attending Totus Tuus; it was the first time my parish hosted. A missionary explained the Eucharist to me in a way that opened my heart to truly believing the Eucharist as the Risen Lord. I attended adoration (one of the first times in my life), and with this new revelation of the Eucharist, I felt an outpouring of his love for me. I cried simply being in his gaze. It was a major turning point in my life. After experiencing his extreme love, I desired more of God. Providentially for me, I attended college at UNK and had the honor to hang out at St. Teresa’s Newman Center. There are countless memories and innumerable wonderful things the Newman Center did in my life. But, to put it briefly, Jesus healed and restored my heart during my time there. St. Teresa’s changed my life through the community and the constant exposure to Jesus through the sacraments. I formed deep relationships, especially with my roommates from the women’s residence at the Newman Center. I was greatly enriched by the intellectual opportunities brought on by FOCUS and St. Teresa’s. I attended monthly classes taught by the Christ the King School Sisters and I attended almost every retreat St. Teresa’s would host. 

    I worked as a Totus Tuus missionary for two summers during my college career, and I loved spending time with the families and children from across our diocese. Through the formation of a Totus Tuus missionary, I learned even more about the Catholic Church. After graduating college, I moved back home to the ranch. While living in the city I could just walk five minutes to the nearest church, but living in the Sandhills is different. When I allow myself to enter into the silence, outside in the vast grassland with the many wonderful aspects of the natural world, I feel myself with God. Yet it can be challenging, being far away from Jesus in the Tabernacle. But it is even more special when I can attend Mass and receive in the most Holy Eucharist: the Creator of the Sandhills.