From the Amen Corner

Fr. Don Wolf's July 23, 2023, "From the Amen Corner" column.

This coming Friday, we will commemorate the 42nd anniversary of the martyrdom of Blessed Stanley Rother. It was in the early morning hours of the 28th of July 1981 that Blessed Stanley was killed in his rectory in the parish of Santiago, Atitlan, in Guatemala. His martyrdom capped off his 13 years of priestly service to the people of the parish and his example of selfless service has proved to be an inspiration to us all.

There are a number of activities that are taking place as part of this week of commemoration and celebration, activities we want everyone to note and to be a part of.

And the first is all the more important because it is the normal and the expected. All during the week of July 24th to July 28th there will be mass at the Shrine at 12:15 p.m., our regular mass time. Everyone is invited to come and enjoy the fruit of this celebration as we focus on the sacrifice and holiness of Blessed Stanley this week. Mass is offered every day and usually we have a nice crowd. This week especially we will continue to focus on the blessing of the life of Stan Rother and his gift to the Church and to the people of Guatemala. Of course, Mass is followed by exposition. This continues until the Divine Mercy Chaplet at 3 p.m. and then benediction. These devotions are especially poignant given that we are commemorating Fr. Rother’s priestly commitment and sacrificial ministry. Spending time meditating on his life of virtue and sacrifice is a blessing all its own.

On Tuesday night the 25th of July there will be Evening Prayer at the shrine. This will be in Spanish. The celebrant and homilist will be Fr. Cristobal Deloera, pastor of Woodward. He has a special devotion to the life and example of Blessed Stanley and attributes his vocational call to the example of Stan. Everyone is invited to be a part of this prayer, no Spanish language test required. It will be at 7 p.m.

On the following evening, Wednesday, July 26 there will be Evening Prayer in English. It will also begin at 7 p.m. Everyone is invited.

On Friday, the 28th of July, there will be the regular Mass at 12:15 p.m. in the chapel. And, at 7 p.m. there will be Mass celebrated in the church. The Mass will be bilingual, English and Spanish. Everyone is invited to come and celebrate the remarkable life and martyrdom of Blessed Stanley and celebrate the first anniversary of his Feast Day in the shrine church. We will offer Mass for the intention of priests everywhere, as well as for a continual increase in vocations to the priesthood and religious life. 

Finally, on Saturday morning, we will have a celebration for the whole family. Come and bring a picnic. We’ll begin at 9 a.m., have games and a bouncy house for the kids. Everyone is invited to enjoy the cool air, a chance to be outside for a while, the opportunity to make it to our Tepeyac Hill. We will pray the rosary there, as well as invite all the kids to enjoy themselves, both in their play and their prayers. Our time together will go to 12:30 p.m. Of course, the church, chapel, museum, and gift-shop will be open the whole time.

The fundamental question for all of us, as we approach this anniversary is simple: what does Stanley’s example hold for us? How are we to relate to his holy life? His sacrifice was extraordinary and his love for his people was extreme; we all recognize the value of what he did as he stood by his people in their time of difficulty. His example stands with the examples of the great martyrs from ages past. But what does his life have to say to our lives? And even more importantly for our younger members: what does a life rooted in the fields and farms of Okarche, west of Oklahoma City, beginning in 1935, have to say to someone born in, say, 2012? Stanley’s life is a gift: how do we unwrap it?

As you know, I am a relative of Fr. Stan. My mother was a Rother from Okarche; she grew up on a farm a couple of miles west of Stanley’s parents. She was Stanley’s father’s first cousin; Stan and I are second cousins. To make it more understandable; my grandfather and Stanley’s grandfather were brothers. The Rother clan is a big one; we stretch through Canadian and Kingfisher counties and beyond in a great interconnected web of relationships and associations remarkable for their sheer number and variety. And as in any family, it’s not just those who have this last name; there are several of us Rother kin here in the parish of Sacred Heart not listed under the ‘R’s. One of my cousins asked me, before the Beatification mass in September of 2017, whether the Archdiocese was going to reserve a special place for the Rother family. I jokingly said: “Sure. The east side of the arena; I think a thousand seats or so should do it.” We’re a pretty big crowd.

I have always been proud of my association with Stan through the family we share. Our heritage from Okarche and our common name bonds us to one another in a real way. This means more to me than a simple accident of history or the distant association of names and bloodlines. I am as much a Rother as a Wolf, and I was raised amidst the crisscross of family influence and family life that shaped my life as much as it shaped his amidst the Rother clan. He is my family and I love my family. Upon his beatification, his life as a priest and a pastor became notable for the whole Church throughout the world; this hint of greatness is made all the greater because we are connected.

And I have always been very proud of the priesthood we have shared together. We were ordained 18 years apart, but this two-decade separation is as nothing. Deacon Rodrigo Serna is be to ordained in August. He and I will be separated in ordination by more than four decades but my priesthood and his are of the same kind and the same type; we are bound together with a bond that makes me proud of his recent call while it enlivens my aged priestly service. Stan and I are united by blood but the Oklahoma priestly connection we share is just as strong and just as remarkable.

This is no small thing. If you have even a passing knowledge of the history of the Church in Oklahoma and the many extraordinary men who have served here as spiritual leaders and pastors with their amazing examples of holiness and sacrifice, it will not surprise you to find out the first native born priest named a martyr in the US is an Oklahoman. This is the legacy we have inherited, he and I and all the priests of this state, together. When I think of Father Stanley Rother, I am more liable to emphasize the connection we share because of the “Father” in his title than to make a claim on the “Rother” in his name. The priestly connection is powerful and powerfully meaningful to me. But beyond these connections we share, the greatest of all connections to him is the sacrifice he was willing to make for his people. In the middle of the civil war going on in Guatemala during the murderous days of the early 80’s, Stan could have driven to Guatemala City, bought a plane ticket, presented his American passport and flown off to safety at any moment. And he would have been safe even if he had gone to Mexico or Costa Rica or Jamaica, not just behind the familiar defenses of the fields and barns of Western Oklahoma. But he declined this option; he decided to stay. More than simply staying, he remained among his people. And he remained, not because he didn’t know the dangers facing him or the threats to his life or the possible outcomes of his presence, but because he did. The danger he lived with was the reason he stayed. “The shepherd does not run at the first sign of danger” he wrote. It was a sentiment from John’s gospel; it was also the truth of Stanley’s life. It is the connection I feel most profoundly when I consider his life. Sacrifice is the heart of the priesthood and Stanley’s life was a life of sacrifice. 

I want my life to be marked by priestly sacrifice in the same way. Not that I will ever sacrifice as he did; or would I want to. When I think of his life and his death, I am humbled by my inadequacy and my failures to serve. In the Early Church where martyrdom was common and the choice to be baptized was to face the prospect of bankruptcy, slavery, and suffering, not just for yourself but for your whole family, the conversation concerning sacrifice was common. So common in fact the bishops had to instruct their people not to volunteer to be martyred but to opt to live the faith in its fullness. I will never be someone who would dream of throwing my life into the lions’ den as an act of public witness, just so it would be public. But the heart of priesthood is the willingness to give your life away in service, as a gift to others. The gift of his presence, his willingness to be there amidst the danger and the violence, these attributes of his holiness inspire my ministry. It is what Stan did; it is how I feel connected to him. I want to be what he was. 

Because of these connections of priesthood and service, I have always been inspired by and feel close to the example of Fr. Tom McSherry who took Fr. Rother’s place in Santiago, Atitlán. Tom went in 1984 and stayed until 2001; that’s 17 years of commitment in the Highlands of Guatemala. And he went there with the example of a martyr’s sacrifice staring him in the face. When Stan had arrived in Guatemala in 1968 it was a place of primitive conditions and grinding poverty; it was not a place of violence, war, and rebellion. Stan had to look out for bad water, black scorpions, and terrible roads in his village, not for death squads or assassination lists. Tom, on the other hand, could walk into the bedroom of his rectory and see the blood stains on the wall and note the hole in the floor scooped out by the bullet fired into the brain of his predecessor. And with all of this, Tom stayed through it all. I have felt as close to Fr. McSherry and his example as I have through kin and commonality to Stanley. Tom sacrificed too; Stan was his model. Stan’s example inspired Tom; it inspires me as well.

We should all note: Fr. Stan’s sacrifice, and Fr. Tom’s, was not simply the life they lived while in Guatemala, nor was it the murderous circumstances they faced as the civil war was playing itself out in the Highlands. The true sacrifice, modeled by Fr. Stan, was surrendering his life to the call he had received. Not all of us are called to be martyrs, thank God, and most of us are not called to the priesthood. But all of us are called by God to complete the work we have been given in God’s plan. And all of us are required to surrender ourselves to God’s presence in our lives. For Stan, it led him to the supreme act of giving his life in blood. For Tom, it brought him to Guatemala for the full 17 years of his priestly service there. For both of them, it began as they knelt before the bishop and received ordination from his hands. They submitted themselves to God’s work in their lives by saying ‘yes’ to the call they had discerned.

When we look at the saintly example Fr. Stan gave and as we celebrate his martyrdom, it’s easy for us to affirm his example as a real act of holiness. Who among us would be able to return to the threats and violence we were free to escape from? Only complete trust in God would inspire anyone to go back into danger; it is exactly where Stan went. In the winter of 1981 Stan and his Guatemalan associate fled the violence in Santiago because they had received death threats. From February to April Stan was at home, anxious to get back; his people needed his presence and his leadership. Staying away was not in his nature; he wanted to be where they most needed him. And there was no shame in staying in Oklahoma. The bishops, his parents and most of his fellow priests were happy to assure him of the reasonableness of staying and of the dangers of retuning. Eventually he determined it was safe enough to go back so he returned in time for Holy Week. His martyrdom followed three months later. He had been more than willing to surrender to the looming danger present there so he could serve God’s people there.

But we don’t usually imagine ourselves in such circumstances. We are not faced with the prospect of death squads or the complications of living our lives threading the needle between competing claims to loyalty. So, for the most part, we don’t imagine ourselves faced with the same invitation to serve. While Stan’s example is the bright shining torch lighting up the darkness, it is a version of the decision we must all make. Our opportunities for holiness might be dim but they are just as real. Stan began his sacrifice when he gave his life away in service at his ordination; it resulted in his martyrdom 18 years later. We begin our service just the same; where it will end up is God’s to know. But we do begin it when we say our ‘yes’ to the call we have received. Talk to any parent; speak to any spouse; spend some time with any teacher; every call from the Lord of Life is a call to lay down our lives in service to another. When God calls us, He wants all we are and all of who we are. With Fr. Rother we have an example of the ‘everything’ God required in his life: it has made his life saintly. In our own lives we are asked to give the same ‘yes’ to the same ‘everything.’ It will make us saintly as well. The circumstances are different; the call is the same. The results will be the same as well. 

Think about it. On the day we draw our last breath we will be surrendering everything. Our time will be no more, our lives will be spent, our money will be beyond our grasp and our future will be collapsed. We will have given everything away. We won’t die in a pool of blood on the floor of a rectory in Guatemala, a victim of civil war, but if we have surrendered our lives to God’s call, we will die a servant to God’s Will; we will be a witness (‘martyr’ means ‘witness’ in Greek) to following Christ. And our witness will begin as it began for Fr. Rother: when we say ‘yes’ to the call we receive, whether it’s on the day when we slip a ring on the finger of our new spouse, when the ultrasound tech says “it’s a girl!”, when we say “I love you enough to say ‘no’” or when we hold the hand of a stranger we’re visiting at a hospice. Fr. Stan’s example is for all of us in every part of life.

We should never forget Fr. Rother’s ordinary life in the midst of his extraordinary example. He was an ordinary guy. No one would have imagined the first saint from Oklahoma would be Stan Rother, not when he was a kid in high school, not when he was ordained and not when he arrived at the mission in Guatemala. He just didn’t catch anyone’s attention; there wasn’t anything about him that said: beatific! Knowing him and his example now, it’s easy to presume a kind of extraordinariness in his life overshadowing everything else. But that’s not fair. Stan was a guy like most other guys of his time and place. His holiness was built on his life of normality and everyday-ness. 

God works through the natural to bring us to the supernatural. Since grace is built on nature the nature of Stanley became the gateway to his holiness. He became saintly because of who he was. All the circumstances of his life became the palette God used to paint the picture of his life. I first wrote ‘all of the gifts and talents of his life became the palette’ but that’s not exactly true. Stan was gifted and talented, but God used not simply the things he was good at to achieve the Divine Will in his life, but all the other parts of his life as well. The broken and weak, the incomplete and the unused, the fearful and the mistaken; all of these were the raw material for his saintly example. Think about that: there may be a thousand things Stanley was good at, but along with those thousand there would have been ten-thousand things he wasn’t good at; all of them were resources for God to make him a saint. Stan did not become someone different than he was as he became a saint, who he was is what became saintly. He did not become someone else; he became the Stanley we all now celebrate. 

There’s a lot of comfort knowing God uses our nature as a foundation for the supernatural. It is true in the life of Stanley Rother; God used Stan’s attributes to achieve saintliness. As you know, families all have their own characteristics. They may be physical or behavioral but they are real and pronounced; they are as normal and as shared among the family members as a prominent nose or the shape of their lips and they mark the members of the family to everyone else. One of the most notable marks of the Rother family is stubbornness. Stan’s father was especially known for this particular attribute (as was my grandfather [and my mother, my uncles, my aunts, their kids, my cousins . . . !]) and he duly passed it on to his oldest son. Stan had a stubborn streak in him a mile wide.

When he arrived in Guatemala, he was able to endure the challenges of learning the languages and entering the pastoral team there because he wasn’t going to be put off by failure or discouragement. He stuck it out. When villagers insisted he join them in their resistance to the government, he stayed out of the agitation and politics; he wasn’t going to be pushed around. When the army came and began to torture and kidnap and murder, he stood up to them; he wasn’t going to be forced or threatened. And when the time came to make a choice to leave or to stay, he stayed; he wasn’t going to be bullied by uniforms and orders, even if they were backed by guns and bullets. Stan’s stubbornness was a mile wide and rooted in concrete; he wasn’t going to be moved. God made use of this part of his personality to bring him to holiness. Stan didn’t have to become someone else in order to become Stanley the saint. Neither do we. 

Of course, God will purify our motives and sanctify our character. It is what holiness is after all. But in the end we will not become another version of ourselves, we won’t be replaced by imposters or clones in order to make it to heaven; it’ll be the ‘us’ we are and no one else. God will make us saintly using the raw materials of our lives, no matter how raw or how material.

Therese of Lisieux was a little neurotic and a bit obsessive; Edith Stein was prone to depression; Francis of Assisi was manic; Ignatius was compulsive; all of them became saints with their frailties intact. We could even make a stronger case: they became saints because their frailties remained in place throughout their lives. Holiness is the achievement of the fullest measure of our humanity, not an escape from it. If we are going to be saints it will be because of who we are, not because of who else we might become. Sometimes Stan’s stubbornness was his greatest gift; at other times it was his heaviest cross; always it was woven into his life. And because it was his, his holiness was shaped by it. 

The French novelist Charles Peguy wrote: “Life holds one tragedy, ultimately: not to have become a saint.” It is tragic, not because heaven needs to have more people, but because the only way to really become human is to live for God, according to God’s call. When we live this way, we are becoming saints. Stan Rother walked the contours of his life with all of their uneven pathways. His weaknesses and his strengths were his constant companions through the darkness and light of his days. At the end of his life he was faced with the temptation he had faced his whole life, a temptation facing us all: to leave or to stay? He chose to stay. When he did he authored the final chapter of a life of extraordinary holiness and deep sanctity. We have our own contours and our own path, and the questions come to us at different moments but if we can answer with the same ‘yes’ we can trust we’ll imitate the same result: our final chapter will to have become a saint.

I pray my life might be same response, even if spoken in the tiniest whisper in the lee of his great shout. I hope my quavering ‘Yes!’ in the final moments might flow from the tiny ‘yesses’ I made through the years as I walk my own pathway. Fr. Rother’s example is an example for all of us. We have only to answer. 

Fr. Don Wolf

Find more information about Blessed Stanley Rother's Feast Day HERE. 

Photo: Fr. Pedro Navarra of the Diocese of San Diego, Fr. Donald Wolf and Fr. Stanley Rother at Fr. Wolf’s ordination. Photo Archdiocese of Oklahoma City Archives.