Blessed Stanley Rother: The farmer, the priest, the shepherd

By Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda, OSV News

(OSV News) -- In December 2016, Pope Francis officially recognized Father Stanley Rother's martyrdom, making him the first American-born martyr. In September 2017, he became the first male born in the United States to be beatified.

How a 46-year-old diocesan priest from a small German farming community in Oklahoma came to live and die in the remote, ancient village of Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, is a story full of wonder and God's providence.

It began when the farm boy from Okarche decided to plant a different kind of harvest, becoming a priest for the then-Oklahoma City and Tulsa diocese in 1963 at age 28. Five years later, Father Rother volunteered for Oklahoma's mission in Guatemala, ultimately finding his heart's vocation as a priest to the Tz'utujil Mayan people -- until his violent death in 1981 on July 28, now his feast day.

Stanley and his four siblings grew up in the farmhouse where he was born, surrounded by extended family. It is in this ordinary life that Stanley first experienced a personal encounter with the Good Shepherd. This is where he learned to be a man of prayer and a hands-on servant with a resolute desire to become a priest. It is here where he learned perseverance needed years later to trust God when academics proved to be a painful challenge in
the seminary. And, it is here where he learned the love and compassion that led him to lay down his life for the Gospel and for his sheep.

It is no coincidence that the same values Stanley learned growing up in an Oklahoma farming community -- putting family first, hard work, kindness, generosity, perseverance -- are precisely the values that enabled him to become a missionary shepherd. Even his knowledge of farming and love for the land connected him in a special way to his impoverished and close-knit Mayan parishioners. It is little wonder, then, that his Santiago Atitlán community claimed him as "our priest."

After enrolling in seminary, Stanley discovered that learning Latin would prove to be a huge obstacle to his priestly vocation. At age 23 he flunked Theology I and was sent home. Back in Oklahoma City, when asked by his bishop, Stanley reiterated his unwavering desire to follow the call to the priesthood. His supportive bishop agreed to find him a new seminary, sending Stanley to Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where he successfully completed his studies.

Stanley never gave up pursuing the truth of his call. Years later, that young man who flunked because he couldn't master Latin volunteered to go to a foreign mission -- where he not only became competent in Spanish, but by the grace of God also was able to master the challenging Tz'utujil dialect of his Mayan parishioners.

When he arrived at Santiago Atitlán in 1968, Father Stanley instantly fell in love with the volatile and stunning land of volcanoes and earthquakes, but above all with its people.
In time, Father Rother helped establish there the first farmers' coop, a school, the first hospital clinic, and the first Catholic radio station, used for catechesis.

While he did not institute the project, he was a critical driving force in establishing Tz'utujil as a written language, which led to the publication of a New Testament in Tz'utujil. This priest and farmer who loved the land and recognized God in all of creation was never afraid to dig in and get his own hands dirty fixing tractors or plowing the land -- a trait deeply loved by his Tz'utujil people.

In one of his final media interviews, Father Stanley explained: "Despite all this (hardship), you see happiness in the people. Their zest for life -- to live and enjoy what they have -- their friendliness, their spirit of cooperation ... They are remarkable. I want to stay as long as I can."His prayer was answered. His body was returned for burial to his hometown of Okarche in western Oklahoma, but his heart is entombed in a side altar at the Santiago Atitlán church, a request of his Tz'utujil community.

In his first apostolic exhortation, "The Joy of the Gospel," Pope Francis describes what he calls "evangelizing gestures." Often little and always powerful, these are the acts and attitudes that mark a Christian as a missionary.

Because he saw the Gospel values not as a set of ideas but as an affair of the heart, Father Stanley took care of the most menial duties with his whole being. Whether listening to someone's pain, fixing a car, changing a diaper, driving someone to the doctor or shopping for the mission's supplies, he recognized the reality of God's presence in each act -- and by doing so he proclaimed the Gospel of love, joy and hope.

Father Stanley came to understand with clarity the importance of "presence." By constantly striving to be present to the people in front of him, to the needs in front of him, he proclaimed a God who lives and suffers with his people. For Father Stanley, the choice to die for his Tz'utujil was a natural extension of the daily choice he made to live for them, and in communion with them.

His death was nothing less than a proclamation of God's love for the poor of Santiago Atitlán.