Bishop Conley: martyred Oklahoma priest showed courage that comes from prayer

Lincoln, Neb., Sep 20, 2017 / 15:50 pm

An Oklahoma priest martyred in Guatemala will be beatified on Saturday, and his life has much to teach us, Bishop James Conley of Lincoln has said.

"To trust God can be risky and even dangerous at times," Bishop Conley said in a Sept. 22 column for the Southern Nebraska Register.

"It requires courage. To be courageous requires that we know the Lord. To know him requires that we pray. Not all of us are called to martyrdom, as Father Stanley Rother was. But each one of us is called to trust the Lord, and to know him, love him, and serve him bravely."

The priest's life "gives me pause to reflect on my own courage, or lack thereof, in following the Lord," the Nebraska bishop said. "Fr. Rother was so confident in what the Lord wanted of him. He was unwavering in courage. He walked into danger, even when others warned him against it. At the heart of his courage and confidence was his intimacy with the Lord in prayer."

Father Rother's beatification Mass will be said Sept. 23 in Oklahoma City. Before his last Christmas, the priest wrote home about the dangers in Guatemala: "The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger."

Fr. Rother, a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, was from the town of Okarche, Okla. A few years after ordination, he became a missionary to Guatemala, where he would spend 13 years of his life. The dioceses of Oklahoma City and Tulsa had established a mission in Santiago Atitlan, a poor rural community of mostly indigenous people, largely Tz'utujil Mayan Indians.

Drawing on life growing up on his family's farm, the mission priest would work the fields and repair broken trucks. He built a farmer's co-op, a school, a hospital, and the area's first Catholic radio station.

The dangers of Guatemala's civil war approached the village in 1980, and Fr. Rother supported his friends and parishioners even as many were abducted and killed – "disappeared" in the local phrasing. In January 1981, his name was found on a hit list. He returned to Oklahoma for a few months, but after receiving his bishop's permission he went back.

On the morning of July 28, 1981, armed men broke into Fr. Rother's rectory. They were from the non-indigenous ethnic group called the Landinos, who had been in conflict with Guatemala's indigenous people and rural poor since the 1960s.

The men intended to disappear him, but he resisted. He struggled but did not call for help, so others at the mission would not be endangered. Fr. Rother was shot dead and the attackers fled.

Pope Francis officially recognized his death as a martyrdom in December 2016.

For Bishop Conley, Fr. Rother's life and death provokes many questions. The priest did not have to be in Guatemala and could have stayed in Oklahoma.

"How many of us would choose to follow the Lord to a near certain martyrdom? Or, if we heard that a friend believed God was calling him to serve in a dangerous mission in a violent country, how many of us might try to stop him?" he asked.

"It would be natural to do so, and reasonable. And yet Fr. Rother knew what the Lord called him to do, and he proceeded faithfully and fearlessly. His bishop, and his family, and his friends, had courage too: the courage to trust that the Holy Spirit was leading him, even when following the Lord into the violence of Guatemala was dangerous."

"None of us should relish danger for its own sake. None of us should be reckless without purpose," Bishop Conley said. "But the Christian life is about following the will of the Lord, without counting the cost. And to do that, we need to know and hear the Lord's voice, and we need to understand the movements of the Holy Spirit."

Bishop Conley will attend Fr. Rother's beatification Mass with dozens of bishops, scores of priests, and thousands of other Catholics.

"We will remember the holiness of Fr. Rother, and thank the Lord for the gift of his selflessness," the bishop said. "We will pray that we might have the same courage that he did, and the same love for our mission, and for the Lord."

"May Fr. Rother pray for us, as we turn to the Lord, seeking the courage to do his will."