Learning to Die: Blessed Stanley Rother and Catholic Motherhood

On September 23rd, 2017, I and about 14,000 of my closest Catholic friends were packed like sardines into the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City for the Beatification of Blessed Stanley Rother. This video gives a powerful portrait of this selfless priest and the reasons behind his future canonization. The energy in the arena on that day is difficult to describe. 

There was a palpable sense of the presence of God, of Father Stanley, the Angels, and the Holy Spirit. I remember looking around as my children prattled on during the ceremony and thinking to myself, this means so much more than I even understand right now…

When I got home, I began to pray about that thought. I began to think about what his life and story truly means for us, particularly as Catholic mothers in modern culture. 

Sure, he’s another Saint and particularly notable to us because he’s an American Priest and Martyr. But there was something else that was begging to be explored about all of this. 

So I picked up his biography, The Shepard Cannot Run and I began to read. 

I tried to really listen to the Lord as I read, seeking to find words for the impression I felt during the ceremony. 

I wasn’t sure what I was listening for but it made itself apparent pretty quickly. 

Here is what I believe the Life of Stanley Rother means to me, and to all Catholic mothers.

God is still calling our sons (and our daughters)

In a world that is changing by the second, we still serve an unchanging God. What a true comfort to know that He was, and is, and is to come-the same life-giving God who elevates our human existence to participate in his own divine nature! Gloria Deo!

It can be tempting, when we think about the state of priestly vocations in this country, to become disheartened and concerned. If God is calling them, where are our priests? Our exisiting Priests are overburdened to the point of exhaustion. There are pockets of the country where vocations are increasing and that is an incredible wonder, but it is painfully obvious that the American Priesthood is still...dwindling. 

But we must not fear!

As mothers, we hold the key.

I am about to make a bold claim.

The state of vocations in America, and furthermore the world, lies in the hands of mothers.

 It is our job to dwell closely with our children, discerning their spiritual needs, praying over their problems big and small, and modeling radical dependence on God. It is our job as mothers to release to the Lord our own fears and concerns related to our children’s futures. It is our job to form our son’s and daughter’s consciences-keeping in mind the reality that God may be calling them to religious life.

Normalizing a life of religious vocation is an important part of that. 

By making sure that you are talking about and exposing your children to religious life in all its forms, you will dispel the myths and shadows that surround this important calling. There are far too many misconceptions about it that need to be addressed through exposure and experience. Bring your children to be around joyful religious priests and sisters, nuns, and monks. 

Make this a special project in your family life. 

Our children must know that the religious life is not a boring, static, joyless existence. It is a vital, beautiful way of love. One that is worth considering. One that is worth as much examination as any other path. One that deserves deep respect and prayer. Pray diligently WITH them for an increase to vocations in all forms! 

Father Stanley shows us that our sons and daughters, even with limitations that might “seem” to preclude them from religious life, are still the type of people God may be calling to feed his sheep.

God is still calling us in our normal ordinary lives to model heroic virtue

A quick inventory of Father Stanley’s life shows just about the most normal and ordinary human being there ever was. He was just a quiet farm boy, who really struggled in school. Father Rother is a bright and blinking light alerting us to a truth that we often forget: God is not looking for superstars!

God is calling YOU, mama.

God is calling you to sainthood and to bring with you the little saints in your home.

You and I don't lead extraordinary and heroic lives, and yet this truth remains; the simple rythmns of family life that prepared Fr. Rother for his call are the same rythmns and simple paths to holiness that prepare us for ours, and our children for theirs. 

It is the daily, beautiful, simple practice of intentional faith and liturgical living that will sanctify you and your children and prepare them for God’s call on their lives. Whether that call is to religious life or to the vocation of marriage; we need ordinary, real examples like Father Stanley that our sons and daughters can look up to, relate to, and model their lives after. 

God Is Still Calling Us To Die

Years ago I gave a talk at my parish Jr. High group about teen saints, and young saints. As I was preparing for that talk, I came up with a pretty decent list of important saints who were ALL under the age of 20. It was at that time that I began to understand the true role of children and young people in the kingdom of God. Throughout the entirety of salvation history, God has always called young people to heroic and even sacrificial virtue. Many of our most revered saints were little children. Gods view of children has not changed. 

But for some reason, we have forgotten to train the hearts of our sons and daughters about this aspect of God’s plan in relation to their own lives.

It's easy for me to get absorbed in the culture and the idea that “kids are just kids” and while I am not suggesting scrupulous and impossible standards for children, I have been wondering lately if I am watering down the gospel call on my children’s lives.

 Am I asking of my children what God is asking of them? Am I asking of myself what God is asking of me?

When we begin to practice surrender to God in the everyday opportunities that present themselves in front of our children, it invites his presence into our children’s lives at a young age. 

They get to know the joy of depending on him early. They can do hard things. They can make small sacrifices. They can work to choose actions that will bring peace and joy to their family. They are capable of that!

When we ask these things, in an age appropriate way, of our children, they learn that serving God is beautiful and to find their true peace in him. These little practices can add up over time. 

These habits create spiritual pathways into which virtue can flow. For some, this will lead to answering the sacrificial call to a religious vocation, but even more importantly for all, it will train them to say yes to God because his way is good, easy, peaceful, and perfectly fits the shape of our hearts.

It is easier to say Yes to God in big things when we have been watching him show up all our lives in the little things.

We can start now to train our children’s hearts to know and understand the trustworthy and unfailing character of God.

 I think that we might see more vocations to the priesthood and religious life  if we taught our children just how beautiful and heroic that life is. It is one of deep virtue and sacrifice. 

Kimberly Hahn says that our children deserve for us to hand them a faith that is beautiful, vibrant, and worth dying for. They deserve for us to answer the call ourselves to heroic virtue and surrender to God in all the big and little ways he calls us, so that they can understand the joy that that brings. So that they can truly find themselves.

 It is in him that we live and move and have our being. But the frenzied pace of our lives often belies this truth. We are so distracted. Our lives are getting more compartmentalized and fragmented by the moment, and the bar we have set for ourselves continues to fall further and further from the one set for us by the saints who have gone before us, many of them during far darker spiritual times than this one in church and human history.

I am praying that you and I will answer God’s call to be set apart, so that we can show our children that THAT is the normal God is asking of them. I’m not suggesting for a moment that God is calling us to literally die for him. That may be the case for some as it was for Father Rother, but more critically, it is in the daily arena of life that God calls us to be set apart in our virtue. This means dying to ourselves. This means self-donation in our homes. 

The reality is that we find joy when we die to the things that keep us from him, and show our children how to do so in the process. Heroic virtue is most difficult in day to day life as we acknowledge that there is an enemy, and we are in a war. We must order our priorities around that reality and not just nod in agreement to it.

Father Stanley Rother’s Beatification is a timely and needed gift from God to our generation. He is a reminder that though our world is rapidly becoming a place almost unrecognizable to us, that the call of God to be “set apart for him” still rings loudly in our American streets and churches. Our boys need him. Our girls need him. Fr. Rother and the many examples of men and women who have answered the call to religious vocations, are together bringing an important reminder to modern mothers and families:

God is still calling you to, “come out and be separate from them” in your prayer life, in the way you parent, in the way you love and treat your spouse, and in how you order the precious moments you are given every day.  

May our sons and daughters find in our homes the gentle, faithful spirit of prayer and diligence that will train their hearts and minds toward the heart and mind of God.  Blessed Stanley Rother, Priest and Marytr, pray for us.