Keeping the Faith on Two Fronts
How a Fayetteville family lives out their commitment to God, country and neighbor
By Rich Reece / Pictures by Denmark Photo & Video
"The forms and tasks of life are many, but there is one holiness, which is cultivated by all who are led by God’s Spirit… All, however, according to their own gifts and duties must steadfastly advance along the way of a living faith, which arouses hope and works through love." - The Second Vatican Council (1964), Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, #41
Tolstoy famously wrote, “All happy families are alike.” That may not be true of all holy families, however. Each family faces different challenges, circumstantial and spiritual, on its faith journey. What holy families seem to have in common are a commitment to that journey, a conviction that God will sustain them in every part of it and a love that shines beyond their own household.
Mike and Mary Thomas and their children Ashley, 16, and Luke, 11, are a happy family. They would never describe themselves as holy. They share the same beliefs and goals as many Catholic families in North Carolina. But their commitment to those beliefs and goals is something you can see, and the love that springs from their faith is something you can feel.
The Thomases have been members of St. Patrick Parish in Fayetteville for 20 years. Mike is a full time Army Reservist, a Colonel with the XVIII Airborne Corps, recently returned from a 14-month deployment in Iraq. Mary teaches academically gifted third graders in the nearby elementary school. Both children are active in church and athletics. Luke is an altar server at St. Patrick’s, and enjoys basketball and golf. Ashley, through St. Patrick’s youth ministry, recently completed a stint in Homeworks, a program that recruits youth to rehab homes for the poor. She’s also on a volleyball team. (In fact, when the family was photographed for NCC, Ashley was away at a teen volleyball camp.) The whole family is into cycling; Mike leads a team of cyclists from Fort Bragg and Fayetteville who have raised thousands of dollars for various charitable causes. Asked about his heroes, Luke named two: his dad and Lance Armstrong.
As a family, the Thomases seem to have it all together. But that closeness hasn’t come without challenges. For most of the last two years, they’ve been apart.
Keeping the Faith in Iraq
When Mike was sent to Iraq the first time, in 1990, he was courting a young Indiana woman he’d only just met. He’d learned as a youngster the importance for a soldier of staying in touch with loved ones. “My dad was in Vietnam, and I was eight years old,” he recalls, “and he’d send these three-inch reel-to-reel tapes so we could hear his voice. I remember actually talking back to the tapes.” By the ‘90s, technology had advanced – a little. “Besides letters, we’d exchange cassettes,” Mike says, “and I think that communication really accelerated our relationship and helped us get to know each other.”
By the time of his recent deployment, staying in touch was much easier but, Mike and Mary realized, just as crucial. “Most of the time,” Mike says, “we could just pick up the phone, or even call each other’s cell phones.”
Mary phoned as often as she could and every day sent comprehensive emails. “Details of the day,” Mary says, “anything that happened with Luke or Ashley, so we didn’t lose what was going on and Mike always felt a part of what was happening here, whether it was church or something with the children.” Mike has saved all those emails.
Mike emailed extensively as well, and sent photos of activities, comrades and examples of Iraqi culture. Mary remembers one photo in particular of some Iraqi children playing in the street. “That was in Samarra, where the golden dome of the mosque had been bombed, and the Shiite-Sunni tension was really high,” Mike explains. “But when our soldiers were walking through the streets, these kids came out to play because they felt it was safe.”
Mike’s Catholic faith, which had always been strong, was a powerful force for peace and solace for him and many of his colleagues in Iraq. “I saw a lot of Catholics who hadn’t been active returning to church and attending Mass there,” he recalls. At one point he was listed on an email request from a St. Patrick’s family whose child was going on a Search retreat. They asked for letters of spiritual support and encouragement for their son. “I wrote,” Mike says with a smile, “and hopefully got the award for ‘letter from farthest away.’ But I said that spiritual faith is very important for a soldier, especially a deployed soldier, in finding a sense of peace.”
In Baghdad, Mike worked in Victory Base Complex, a sprawling administrative center including Saddam Hussein’s Al Faw Palace. There were three Catholic masses every weekend and sometimes Mike attended all of them. He was a Reader, Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion and – he laughs here – “unofficial director of liturgy.”
There were some 70,000 people in the area of the complex, he explains, in roughly three categories: U.S./Coalition forces, civilian contractors and “third-country nationals, folks typically from the Philippines, Nepal or India,” who provided personal services, everything from laundry to haircuts, and worked 7am to 7pm seven days a week. “We had a Mass at 8pm on Saturday evenings especially to allow those workers to attend,” Mike says, “and I know we were the only denomination that did that.”
The Sunday evening Mass was actually held in the palace, in a space that was normally a conference room. “This was where operational war planning took place,” Mike says. “In that room had sat the Vice President of the U.S., the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Iraqi leadership and the senior-senior military leadership of all the troops involved.” Mass was held there especially for the benefit of that top Army leadership, a surprising number of whom, Mike explains, are Catholic. “And when that room became sacred space for 45 minutes a week,” Mike says, “I couldn’t help but think that somehow that might permeate the atmosphere for the rest of the week, and have a beneficial effect on the deliberations that went on there.”
Keeping the Faith at Home
During Mike’s deployment, Mary treasured the support of their friends at church. Every week, she says, people would come up to her after Mass and ask how Mike was doing and reassure her of their prayers. “I was so aware of the loving nature of our parish,” she says. St. Patrick’s has a significant number of military families, and is particular sensitive to their needs. Each week, those who are being deployed or re-deployed are asked to stand and receive a special blessing. “It’s a real simple gesture,” Mike says, “but it really meant a lot to me.”
The warmth of a Catholic community is something Mary experienced before she was Catholic. She grew up Baptist in Indiana, but St. Meinrad seminary was nearby and there was a large Catholic presence in the area. “A lot of my friends were Catholic,” Mary says, “and I was always intrigued by Catholicism. Then my first year of teaching was in a Catholic school, and an older nun, Sister Bea, took me under her wing. I loved that sense of community, and I loved the Sisters. I really think that was the beginning of my journey into the Church.”
Ashley also found faith support with other youth from her parish while her dad was away. She found the recent Homeworks experience especially empowering. When the beneficiaries of the project expressed their thanks, Mary says, her daughter realized that teenagers really could make a difference in people’s lives. “I think she found it very moving.”
Mike and Mary are strongly aware of their role in showing their children the kind of lives to which their faith calls them. “We’ll think of someone while we’re in the car and pray for them. We read Bible stories,” Mary says. “But I think the way that we live our lives speaks most loudly.”
She mentions Mike’s cycling. He and his fellow cyclists have organized many rides to benefit charities such as the MS Society, the Lance Armstrong Foundation and victims of histiocytosis, a disease that took the life of a young St. Patrick’s parishioner. Mike has also gone on a mission trip with Fr. Pat Keane to Santo Domingo de Guzman in El Salvador, and Mike and Mary have been talking about taking their daughter on one of those trips. The long list of the couple’s various roles at St. Patrick’s “probably makes us the most boring family in the Diocese,” Mike jokes. Pastoral Council, Stewardship Committee, involving military families in stewardship, men’s spirituality group… Mary was for seven years involved with Nazareth House – part of an interfaith hospitality effort of several churches in Fayetteville to help families in need of shelter, food and employment. “The message for our children, hopefully,” Mary says, “is that we give of what we have—our time, talent and also our treasure -- to those who are in need.”
On the back of Mike Thomas’s business card is this quotation: “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may know peace.”
“Like all parents,” Mike says, “we want our kids’ lives to be better than ours. I never forget how blessed we are to live in this country. And that speaks to me on both a personal and professional level.”
It’s clear, though, that the legacy Mike and Mary want to leave their children is much more than safety. It’s an understanding of the Gospel, and a loving example of how to live it.