The Rother Family
Stanley’s Road to the Priesthood: A Vision of Mission
Everything Changes: The First Seminary
Mount St. Mary’s
Ordination Day: May 25, 1963
Ministry: The Early Years
The Texoma Undertaking
Stanley’s First Work with Indians
An Oklahoma Mission in Guatemala
Why Me?
Chapter 4: MICATOKLA: Stanley’s New Home
MICATOKLA
Fitting in at MICATOKLA
Building the Hospitalito
Building Communication
The Making of a Home
The Tz’utujil People
And Then There Was One: MICATOKLA Changes
The Missionary’s Work of Love
Family Bonds Across the Miles
Living a Eucharistic Life
The Gift of Humor
The Great Earthquake of 1976
Where Two or More Are Gathered
Build My Church
Watching Storms Building from a Distance
First Signs of Danger
The Violence Reaches Lake Atitlán
Orejas, Not for Listening
An Unwanted Top 10 List
The New Normal
A Martyr of Charity
Diego Quic
A Bloodbath in Atitlán
“What Can I Do?”
Stanley Rother’s Garden of Gethsemane
The Letters
Coming Home
Summertime in the Village
The Hour Has Come
This Is My Blood …
The Tree Cried Out and Bled, But It Did Not Die
“They Killed Stan”
Witness to the Living Christ Present in His People
A Martyr for His People
“From the Beginning of Our Priesthood”
Father Stanley Rother: Patron for All Priests
Epilogue by Most Reverend Eusebius J. Beltran, Archbishop Emeritus of Oklahoma City
Preface to the Revised Edition
I consider myself genuinely privileged to be the person, to be the author, who gets to tell the story of Father Stanley Rother, the martyr from Okarche, Oklahoma. From book signings and radio shows, to speaking at women’s conferences and parish events — the desire of people to know more about our first American martyr has been boundless.
Two things have become clear to me since I first wrote this book. First, we are all in great need of the witness of humble servants like Blessed Stanley Rother. As a faithful man who dared to love Jesus with everything he had, he is a testament to the difference that one person — even an ordinary person like me — can, and does, make. And as a diocesan priest, Blessed Stanley has touched the hearts of seminarians and parish priests hungry for that zealous witness of what the priesthood is and what it can be.
The second thing that is undeniable is that the Holy Spirit wants Blessed Stanley Rother’s story told! As a Church, we need Stanley Rother’s servant spirit, his faith witness, his ordinary story — especially at this particular moment in our history. His beatification is nothing short of Divine Providence, and an exceptional gift to the Church — especially the Church of the Americas.
In his 1959 encyclical titled Sacerdotii Nostri Primordia (From the Beginning of Our Priesthood), Pope John XXIII presented the life of St. John Vianney as a model for priests and seminarians.
The pope concluded
