Ms. Christina Wassell

Christina Wassell is a convert to Roman Catholicism striving to live the Good Life in the woods of central Massachusetts. She and her husband Scott, along with their seven boys enjoy a life characterized by a deep commitment to building Catholic Culture. Having built a little homestead with their own hands in 2010, she considers her true vocation the project of ‘building home,’ which is ongoing. It includes growing a garden, raising (and slaughtering!) animals for meat and eggs, educating the children at home, and living out days rooted in the seasons of the Liturgical Calendar to dictate times of fasting and feasting, prayer and penance. The Holy Family’s ‘hidden life at Nazareth’ serves as inspiration for this life centered on the home.

For Christina and her family, the drive to build Catholic Culture must obviously involve real intentionality about their wider community. For the last decade the Wassells have worked with families in their church and others to build a robust experience of ‘real life’ for themselves and their children. This life includes singing and playing music together, hosting a yearly theater camp for 40+ homeschoolers, learning to contra dance and swing dance and organizing regular dances for young people, and assembling all manner of book groups and classes for young learners. This life is full of cooking together, eating together, celebrating the feasts together, and of course enjoying the popular piety of Roman Catholicism, which means praying together. While this kind of life does not award Ph.D.’s or get books published, Christina believes it will leave a lasting legacy of redemption for the people it touches.

The Wassell family enjoyed a winding path through Protestantism before becoming Catholic. Christina was raised in a non-Christian home, but quickly found herself involved in a home, Bible-based church with her future husband in middle and high school. They attended Gordon College together and worshipped at broadly Evangelical and Methodist Churches before settling in at Christ Church in Hamilton for a decade, where their first 4 boys were baptized. This high-church Episcopalian congregation had strong devotion to both the Bible and liturgy, which ultimately set the Wassells on the path to Rome. Their coming into the church in 2010 was followed up by a more recent move to attending the Latin Mass. The Wassells are now thriving as an FSSP parish in Providence, RI, and feel that for the first time they are enjoying the real fullness of the ancient roots of Roman Catholicism.

Christina is a graduate of Gordon College, with a BA in English. She has been teaching in a professional capacity since 2005 at New Hope Courses for Homeschoolers in Boxford, MA, just one day a week during the school year. This includes teaching literature and writing classes, as well as Ancient and Medieval History to middle schoolers, as well as creative writing workshops for younger students. While Christina does have a deep passion for teaching young people, after 16 years of working at New Hope she will enjoy a break in the coming year to focus more time and energy on her own students at home. She has 2 high schoolers this year, 2 elementary students and one baby to keep her busy. Her eldest 2 boys are enjoying a rigorous Great Books-style higher education at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, NH.