Mary Madelyn Mertes feels honored to help ‘echo down’ the faith
Serves as assistant diocesan director of catechetical formation
Mary Madelyn Mertes hears the Gospel radiating and resonating throughout all of history.
It’s a process she feels privileged to participate in.
“Catechesis literally means to echo down,” said Ms. Mertes, the diocese’s assistant director of catechetical formation. “It’s a way of living and a way of being that has been echoing down for 20 centuries.”
She defined catechesis as “the holistic, lifelong journey of becoming a saint.”
“It’s not about memorizing the Catechism,” she said. “It’s not just about doing charitable works. It’s about the human, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of our lives as we develop and grow.”
That’s not to say it isn’t important to learn about who God is — “because we can’t be in relationship with someone we don’t know” — but it isn’t enough.
“God calls us also to love him and be in relationship with him,” said Ms. Mertes. “Our particular judgment at the end of our life isn’t a test of how well we can theologically explain the Holy Trinity. It’s a test of our hearts — of how we have taken who we know the Trinity to be and allowed ourselves to be transformed by it so we, in turn, can transform the world around us by our lives.”
That conviction has been driving Ms. Mertes since she came to work in the Chancery in 2023 and began her current role in June 2024.
She likens the communal process of forming saints and initiating people into the Church to an apprenticeship.
“Back in the day, if you wanted to be a blacksmith, you didn’t go to blacksmith school,” she noted. “You moved into a room in the home of a blacksmith and got to know him and live the way he lived and work the way he worked.”
“Echoing down” begins with parents.
“Before a child is old enough to learn the words of the ‘Our Father’ or the ‘Hail Mary’ or know the Seven Sacraments or what the Eucharist is, they see their parents taking them to Mass, genuflecting before the Most Blessed Sacrament, and praying,” she said.
A catechist’s responsibility is to help families with that process.
Ms. Mertes’s job is to give catechists what they need to do that well.
“My favorite part is getting out to the parishes and working with the people and seeing all the beautiful churches in the diocese,” she said. “It’s my special goal to visit every one of them.”
Ms. Mertes is the staff contact for questions about the formation aspects of the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA) in the diocese and is coordinating a diocesan-wide project on renewal of Christian Initiation Ministry.
She also works with Deacon Enrique Castro, diocesan executive director of evangelization and faith formation, to lead, with Jose Funes, diocesan assistant director of of pastoral ministry, the planning and implementation of a diocesan faith formation program for the laity in our parishes; to support marriage preparation and natural family planning in the diocese; and with Maureen Quinn, diocesan director of Religious Education and Youth/Young Adult Ministry, to support parish directors of religious education (DREs) and others involved in catechesis.
“My job really is to offer support and resources and guidance to people in the parishes to help them accompany all their parishioners on their journey with Christ and help everyone in their communities become saints,” she said.
Her days are filled with variety. Some involve heavy travel throughout the diocese, others involve catching up in the Chancery.
She was especially pleased to be part of the team that organized local events surrounding the Eucharistic Pilgrimage in the summer of 2024, and to have helped revive the end-of-year gatherings of catechetical leaders in the diocese.
“I think it’s very important to provide opportunities to bring our parish leaders together, to build that community so they know there are people who support them, and we’ve seen that community grow and bloom in the past two years,” she said.
Without ceasing
Ms. Mertes grew up in a devout Catholic family in Kansas City.
“It’s who I am,” she said. “My relationship with God is central to everything I do in life.”
Her Mom grew up in Otterville, her Dad in Tipton.
“When I visited my grandparents’ farm, we would go to Mass at St. Joseph in Clifton City, with people pouring out the door at Christmas and Helen Seifert spilling it out on the organ,” she recalled.
She said her parents are amazing.
“I’m their apprentice,” she said. “And when I look at them, I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather be apprentice to.”
When they presented her as an infant at church for Baptism, the priest asked, “What do you ask of God’s Church for Mary Madelyn?”
“Faith,” her parents responded.
“That still strikes me very profoundly,” said Ms. Mertes. “I have wrestled a lot with God, a lot with the Church. But I’ve been incredibly blessed with this deep, innate sense of faith in the truth of the presence of Christ in the Catholic Church.”
She attended Catholic schools from kindergarten through 12th grade.
In high school, she struggled with Church teaching and argued with her parents every Sunday over going to Mass.
In college at the University of Missouri, she made some new friends and realized that the person she was with them wasn’t the type of person who could recite the Creed in good conscience at Mass.
“When I realized that, I didn’t want to change because I didn’t want to lose my friends, so I quit going to Mass,” she said.
Still, once a year, she would go to Reconciliation so she could receive Holy Communion at Easter.
The rest of the year, she abstained from Holy Communion whenever she was home with her family.
“I knew in my heart of hearts that I was not in communion with the Church,” she said. “To me, it was very important not to lie about that.”
As the years passed, she realized that she was missing a good community and sense of purpose.
During her junior year, she traveled to Washington, D.C., with some people she didn’t know very well for the March for Life.
One of her traveling companions said, “I don’t know if you’re Catholic, but we’re going to pray a Rosary and wonder if you’d like to join us.”
She took them up on their offer and wound up going to Mass with them three times in four days.
“I felt that this was maybe what I was longing for,” she recalled.
Back on campus, she started spending time with her new friends, who were very active at the Newman Center.
“My Mom sent me back to school as a fallen-away Catholic who wasn’t interested in going to Mass,” Ms. Mertes noted. “I came back for Spring Break and told her, ‘I now make a Holy Hour four days a week and have been hanging out a lot at the Newman Center.”
Her mother initially thought it was a phase.
“If it’s a phase, it’s the longest phase I’ve maintained in my life,” said Ms. Mertes. “It’s been eight years!”
She felt like she’d been wandering.
“And then I just opened the door to my heart a little bit, and the Lord Jesus grabbed his chance and took hold of me and hasn’t let go,” she said.
A complete gift
Upon graduating, Ms. Mertes worked for two years in liturgy and development at the Columbia Newman Center.
She then was accepted into the Echo Graduate Service Program at the University of Notre Dame, where she studied for a master’s degree in theology while completing a Catholic leadership development program through the university’s McGrath Institute for Church Life.
“I had been working for the Church for about two years,” she recalled. “I loved it but was also burned out and really struggling.”
She needed someone to teach her how to have a sustainable job in ministry — “how to make yourself a complete gift to the Church without burning yourself out.”
She and two of her classmates worked in various forms of catechetical ministry in parishes in Atlanta while receiving additional human and intellectual formation and experience.
“The program’s purpose is to show people in dioceses how to train catechists within the parishes,” she said. “I think it prepared me very well to do that.”
Preparing to graduate, she felt like the Lord was calling her back to central Missouri.
“The Holy Spirit wanted me to be here,” she said. “I think that showed.”
She had heard that Archbishop Shawn McKnight, formerly of Jefferson City, was interested in expanding the faith formation staff in the Chancery.
She send him an email with her resume attached to it.
“I think that’s the boldest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she said.
He quickly responded.
She came to work here in 2023 and was promoted to her current position less than a year later.
“Me and the ice”
When Ms. Mertes is not working, she enjoys figure skating.
“I find it very meditative,” she said. “When you’re jumping, all your muscles have to be engaged and in the right place. It requires so much focus, I can’t think of anything else while I’m doing it. It’s just me and the ice.”
She believes it’s crucial for everyone who’s involved in ministry to have a hobby or community outside of work.
Figure skating helps her resist the temptation of letting her job become her identity or measuring her worth by her productivity.
“It helps keep me grounded, it helps keep me humble,” she said.
Of all the saints, Ms. Mertes relates best to St. Peter and to her patron saint, Mary Magdalene.
“Peter reminds me that I don’t have to be perfect,” she said. “He wants to follow Jesus 100 percent and is constantly putting his heart and soul into it, and he puts his foot in his mouth all the time.
“Mary Magdalene was so close to our Lord — there at the foot of the cross, there at the tomb. She just wanted to be as close to him as she could,” she said.
Accordingly, Ms. Mertes’s favorite Scripture verse is from the Song of Songs: “I have found him whom my heart loves.”
She recognizes a strong spirit of renewal in this diocese and throughout the Church, and an openness to try things in new ways.
“I especially see that in the parishes that are seeking to be creative in carrying-out their mission,” she said.
She encourages the people of this diocese to work on the lost discipline of sitting quietly in prayer and listening.
“I frequently struggle with the temptation to believe that prayer needs to be productive, that I need to get something out of it, that I have this to-do list of things I want solutions for,” she said.
None of that is the point of prayer.
“Prayer is the encounter of my whole self with God’s whole self,” she insisted. “I think all of us would benefit from building our ability to sit in silence and listen to the Lord’s voice for 10 minutes.”
As her work continues, Ms. Mertes asks for prayers for fidelity in her ongoing discernment: “that I’ll be able to listen well to the guidance of the Spirit in his desires for our community, so that I can then cooperate well with his plan for the Church.”
