IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
It is not enough merely to have saints; we need saints for our times! An insightful comment from Simone Weil. The saints of old have much to offer; but we look at their goodness, faith, and selflessness and find it easier to admire them than to imitate them. Their lives and their circumstances seem so removed from our own that we easily distance ourselves from them.
So, I would like to propose a saint for our times, Stanley Rother (1935-1981), an Oklahoma farm boy who became a missionary with the poor in Atitlan, Guatemala, and eventually died a martyr. His life and his struggles (save perhaps for his extraordinary courage at the end) are something to which we can easily relate.

Who is Stanley Rother? He was a priest from Oklahoma who was shot to death in Guatemala in 1981. He has been beatified as a martyr and is soon to become the first male born in the United States to be canonized. Here, in brief, is his story.
Stanley Rother was born to a farming family in Okarche, Oklahoma, the oldest of four children. He grew up helping work the family farm and for the rest of his life and ministry he remained forever the farmer more than the scholar. Growing up and working with his family, he was more at home tilling the soil, fixing engines and digging wells than he was reading Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. This would serve him well in his work with the poor as a missionary, though it served him less well when he first set out to study for the priesthood.
His initial years in the seminary were a struggle. Trying to study philosophy (in Latin) as a preparation for his theological studies proved a bit too much for him. After a couple of years, the seminary staff advised him to leave, telling him that he lacked the academic abilities to study for the priesthood. Returning to the farm, he sought the advice of his bishop and was eventually sent to Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Maryland. While he didn’t exactly thrive there academically, he thrived there in other ways, ways that impressed the seminary staff enough that they recommended him for ordination.
Back in his own diocese, he spent the first years of his priesthood mostly doing manual work, redoing an abandoned property that the diocese had inherited and turning it into a functioning renewal center. Then, in 1978, he was invited to join a diocesan mission team that had begun a mission in Guatemala. Everything in his background and personality now served to make him ideal for this type of work and, ironically, he, who once struggled to learn Latin, was now able to learn the difficult language of the people he worked with (Tz’utujil) and become one of the people who helped develop its written alphabet, vocabulary and grammar. He ministered to the people sacramentally, but he also reached out to them personally, helping them farm, finding resources to help them and occasionally giving them money out of his own pocket. Eventually he became their trusted friend and leader.
However, not everything was that idyllic. The political situation in the country was radically deteriorating, violence was everywhere and anyone perceived to be in opposition to the government faced the possibility of intimidation, disappearance, torture and death. Stanley tried to remain apolitical, but simply working with the poor was seen as being political. As well, at a point, a number of his own catechists were tortured and killed and, not surprisingly, he found himself on a death list and was hustled out of the country for his own safety. For three months, back with his family in Oklahoma, he agonized about whether to return to Guatemala, knowing that it meant almost certain death. The decision was especially difficult because, while clearly he felt called to return to Guatemala, he worried about what his death there would mean to his elderly parents.
He made the decision to return to Guatemala, fired by Jesus’ saying that the shepherd doesn’t run when the sheep are in danger. Four months later, he was shot to death in the missionary compound within which he lived, fighting to the end with his attackers not to be taken alive and made “to disappear.” Instantly, he was recognized as a martyr and when his body was flown back to Oklahoma for burial, the community in Atitlan kept his heart and turned the room in which he was martyred into a chapel.
A number of books have been written about him and I highly recommend two of them. For a substantial biographical account, read Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda, The Shepherd Who Didn’t Run. For a hagiographical tribute to him read Henri Nouwen, Love in a Fearful Land.
We have patron saints for every cause and occasion. For whom or for what might Stanley Rother be considered a patron saint? For all of us ordinary people of whom circumstance at times asks for an exceptional courage.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

ON ORDINARY TIMES
By Lucia A. Silecchia

She was selling her wares at a rural autumn festival – the hand-knitted scarfs, sweaters, baby clothes and blankets that she made to sell to those of us gathered around her table to admire her creations.

I had purchased a few things from her last year – for myself and for loved ones. So, I was glad to see that she was back. Patience is not a strong suit of mine. Hence, my admiration for those who take so much time to make something beautiful by hand is particularly great. This year, I bought a blanket knitted with some favorite colors in a joyful design.

There was a fortunate, brief lull in the activity around the table – interrupted only by a young woman who stopped by to buy a dinosaur hat that, somehow, she managed to wear with style. The chill in the air, perhaps, prompted this otherwise unlikely fashion choice.

In that interlude, I asked how long it took to make a scarf, or a baby blanket, or, yes – a dinosaur hat. The friendly artisan gave me her best estimates. But then she told me that it could take much longer because sometimes she found herself in the midst of a project, would look at it honestly, decide it was not right, unravel it and begin again.

I suppose it should not have surprised me that someone who created such beautiful things would have a bit of the perfectionist in her. Yet, it also struck me that it must be difficult to look at something that had taken so much time and effort to make and be willing to unravel it all and start anew.

I wonder, though, if there is great wisdom in having the strength to do just that. To make a change and to unravel errors, misplaced values and mistaken priorities takes grace and strength. To start afresh without clinging to the false starts of the past is a gloriously difficult challenge.

Perhaps, as the days shorten and another year is winding down, the knitter’s wisdom may have a place. When we start to look back at the year that is drawing to a close and prepare for the excitement of a new year with its fresh starts and resolutions, it is easy to tinker around the edges of things and make some small adjustments to the patterns of everyday life.

Yet, sometimes in life, there can be an invitation to do more and to make more radical new beginnings.
I suppose that I would never have noticed if the blanket I bought had defects in it. “Pretty good” would have been good enough for me. Yet, it would not have been good enough for the talented woman who knitted it together. She knew that sometimes starting over was the best way to move beyond “pretty good.”

Maybe in this season of joyful hope and new plans, a prayer for the grace to unravel the old and begin again is a prayer worth praying.

A blanket, hat or sweater created from the unraveling of imperfect ones are beautiful things. Yet, we have also been promised that “whoever is in Christ is a new creation.” 2 Cor. 5:17. I have to think that a newly created son or daughter of God is far more beautiful.

So, with gratitude for the good example of a knitter willing to unravel the old and reweave the new, I hope she is an inspiration to do the same and remake our ordinary times.

(Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Research at the Catholic University of America. “On Ordinary Times” is a biweekly column reflecting on the ways to find the sacred in the simple. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.)

FOR THE JOURNEY
By Effie Caldarola (CNS)

My great-grandfather, a refugee from the devastating famine in Ireland, came to Nebraska to farm. Generations later, I grew up on that farm.

I have roots – literal and figurative – in the land he purchased, a very small acreage of which I still own.
These roots help me to identify with the farming images of the Gospel. Jesus lived in a largely agrarian economy.

Sowing, reaping, noticing weeds along the roadside – this was Jesus’s world. He saw sheep grazing on hillsides, fishing boats plying the waters, full measures of grain being pressed into laps.
He knew the familiar smells of manure, and the fishy odor of a catch being unloaded. Jesus lived in an earthy, messy, tactile world.

So, the other day when the Gospel reading was about the man who was harvesting so much grain that he decided to tear down his barns and build bigger ones, I could identify.

I’m familiar with the language of grain prices, yields (how many bushels did an acre produce), the perennial worries about hail and drought.

And I certainly know people who have built bigger barns. We might call that success or business acumen, and sometimes it is.

But in the reading from Luke 12, Jesus couches his story about the rich man who built bigger barns as a story of greed. Why?

First of all, notice how often Jesus rails against hypocrisy and greed. These are the social sins he cares deeply about.

Jesus lived among the poor, in a society that offered no “safety net.” The rich grew richer without fair taxation, a story familiar in America today.

So what’s the problem with the successful farmer? I don’t think his ample harvest is what Jesus decries.

No, instead it’s his attitude toward wealth and his inability to see the bigger picture of his own life.

In Jesus’ parable, the rich farmer dies and is called to account for his life that very night, after his big barns are built and he’s feeling flush. What good is his wealth to him now? All of us will face that day.

Jesus says, “Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God.”

He adds, “Take care to guard against all greed, … for one’s life does not consist of possessions.”

Stuff. We Americans have an enormous amount of stuff, and yet we always want more. We rent millions of storage units for our possessions, and yet we want more.

It’s a spiritual challenge, especially with the excess and consumerism of an American Christmas approaching.

It’s normal to save and plan for retirement. And yet, how often do we obsess about it?

Like the greedy farmer, we yearn to eat, drink and be merry – when we have “enough.” But what is “enough”?

Our church proclaims a “preferential option for the poor.” This term was first used by Father Pedro Arrupe, leader of the Jesuits, in 1968. St. John Paul II wrote of an “option for the poor” in his 1991 social encyclical “Centesimus Annus.” This concept runs throughout Hebrew and Christian Scripture.

Does it run through our lives? Do we vote with this concept in mind? Do we give, not just from our excess, but sacrificially, to the Lord through his poor, first? Do we feed the hungry? Welcome the refugee, like my great-grandfather? Clothe the naked?

When Jesus tells us to “take care,” I think he wants us to understand how short life is and how much better our lives and world could be if we lived simpler, more generous lives in every way.

(Effie Caldarola writes for the Catholic News Service.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Fifty years ago, on an overcast, cold, fall day in the gymnasium of the local public high school, I was ordained to the priesthood. Beyond the grey sky, another thing marked the event. This was a tender season for my family and me. Both our parents had died (and died young) within a year and a half just prior to this and we were still somewhat fragile of heart. In that setting, I was ordained a priest.

Within the few words allowed in a short column, what do I most want to say as I mark the fiftieth anniversary of that day? I will borrow from the novelist Morris West, who begins his autobiography this way: When you reach the age of seventy-five, there should only be three phrases left in your vocabulary, thank you, thank you, and thank you!

I just turned seventy-five and reflecting on fifty years of priesthood, many thoughts and feelings come to mind; life, after all, has its seasons. However, the feeling that overrides all others is that of gratitude, thank you, thank you, and thank you! Thank you to God, to grace, to the church, to my family, to the Oblates, to the many friends who have loved and supported me, to the wonderful schools I have taught in, and to the thousands of people I have encountered in those fifty years of ministry.

My initial call to the priesthood and the Oblate congregation was not the stuff of romance. I didn’t enter religious life and the seminary because I was attracted to it. The opposite. This was not what I wanted. But I felt called, strongly and clearly, and at the tender age of seventeen made the decision to enter religious life. Today, people may well raise questions about the wisdom and freedom of such a decision at age seventeen, but looking back all these years later, I can honestly say that this is the clearest, purest, and most unselfish decision that I have yet made in my life. I have no regrets. I wouldn’t have chosen this life except for a strong call that I initially tried to resist; and, knowing myself as I do, it is by far the most life-giving choice that I possibly could have made. I say this because, knowing myself and knowing my wounds, I know too that I would not have been nearly as generative (nor as happy) in any other state in life. I nurse some deep wounds, not moral ones, but wounds of the heart, and those very wounds have been, thanks to the grace of God, a source of fruitfulness in my ministry.

Moreover, I have been blessed in the ministries that have been assigned to me. As a seminarian, I dreamed of being a parish priest, but that was never to be. Immediately after ordination, I was sent to do graduate studies in theology and then taught theology at various seminaries and theology schools for most of these fifty years, save for twelve years that I served as a provincial superior of my local Oblate community and on the Oblate General Council in Rome. I loved teaching! I was meant to be a religious teacher and religious writer and so my ministry, all of it, has been very satisfying. My hope is that it has been generative for others.

In addition, I have been blessed by the Oblate communities within which I lived. My ministry usually had me living in larger Oblate communities and through these fifty years, I estimate that I have lived in community with well over three hundred different men. That’s a rich experience. Moreover, I have always lived in healthy, robust, caring, supportive, and intellectually challenging communities that gave me the spiritual and human family I needed. There were tensions at times, but those tensions were never not life giving. Religious community is unique, sui generis. It isn’t family in the emotional or psychosexual sense, but family that is rooted in something deeper than biology and attraction – faith.

There have been struggles of course, not least with the emotional issues around celibacy and living inside a loneliness which (as Merton once said) God, himself, condemned. It is not good for someone to be alone! It is here too where my Oblate religious community has been an anchor. Vowed celibacy can be lived and can be fruitful, though not without community support.

Let me end with a comment that I once heard from a priest who was celebrating his eighty-fifth birthday and his sixtieth anniversary of ordination. Asked how he felt about it all, he said, “It wasn’t always easy! There were some bitter, lonely times. Everyone in my ordination class left the priesthood, every one of them, and I was tempted too. But I stayed and now, looking back after sixty years, I’m pretty happy with the way my life turned out!”

That sums up my feelings too after fifty years – I’m pretty happy with the way it has turned out – and deeply, deeply grateful.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

THINGS OLD AND NEW
By Ruth Powers
Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. –1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
During the month of November, we in the United States traditionally focus on the virtue of gratitude, looking back to that feast celebrated by the Pilgrims as they gave thanks for a good harvest after the first terrible winter they spent in the New World. However, as Catholics and as Christians, we are called to make gratitude one of the central virtues in our lives. We are, first, called to gratitude by the Scriptures. Both the Old and the New Testament speak of the importance of giving thanks to God in all things and all circumstances. The psalms contain many beautiful hymns of thankfulness and praise, that God is the source of all things and that when we recognize this truth, we are moved to thanksgiving. St. Paul teaches about the virtue of Christian thankfulness in many of his letters even when the communities to whom he writes are undergoing trials. Gratitude is also a theme in the writings and teachings of too many saints to enumerate.

Often, though, we are more likely to forget that all we have we owe to God, and to become distracted by the concerns of our daily lives and forget to give God the thanks He deserves for all He gives to us. We are much more likely to complain about what is going wrong in our lives than to focus on the gifts we have been given. True gratitude (and not mere politeness) flows out of humility. It begins with the realization that we lack something that has been freely supplied by another because at that time we could not get or do it for ourselves.
As people of faith, we also know that God is the ultimate source of “life, the universe and everything” and so must be the ultimate object of our gratitude. It’s easy to think of doing this when all is well, but St. Paul reminds us that we are to give thanks in all circumstances, not just the good ones, because we never know what part even seemingly bad or uncomfortable things may have in God’s plan for us.
There is a passage in Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place where she and her sister give thanks for the fleas that infest the bunkhouse where they are living in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp. Later they realize that the guards have not searched their bunks and found their contraband Bibles because of the fleas.
At the end of his life, St. Francis of Assisi was blind and in constant pain; yet in these seemingly terrible circumstances, he wrote his most famous prayer, which was a hymn of thanks: “Praise be my Lord for Brother Sun…, Sister Moon and the stars…, Sister Water …, Brother Fire…, our Sister Mother Earth…, Praise and bless my Lord and give him thanks.” We are reminded to cultivate gratitude even when it seems things are going badly for us.
The other issue that cultivating the virtue of gratitude will help to combat is the culture of entitlement that seems to permeate our society. Many people seem to feel that the world owes them preferential treatment for no other reason than an inflated vision of their own importance. Gratitude teaches us that our own labors, important as they may be, have their source in gifts given to us by God and thus should be sources of humility and gratitude toward the one who loves us enough to give us those gifts. We run into immeasurable trouble when we begin to give ourselves credit for what we have rather than giving thanks to the one who is the true source of all.
Although November may be the time culturally when we think about giving thanks, gratitude needs to be nurtured and expressed daily. A very wise retreat master once challenged a group of retreatants to this meditation: “Think about what your life would be like if you woke up one morning and all you had left in your life was what you had thanked God for the day before.” We would do well to meditate on this frequently.

(Ruth Powers is the program coordinator for St. Mary Basilica Parish in Natchez.)