Volunteers for Blessed Stanley
One of my favorite William Steig drawings appeared in his book The Lonely Ones. The drawing is of a strange little man sitting in a box. The box lies on its side, offering cover for the man, or maybe a hiding place. His large, droopy eyes stare directly at the viewer. His mouth is expressionless. He wears something like a gown and his hands are folded in his lap. Outside the box are what might be pebbles and a couple of weeds. The caption reads People are no damn good. There are no quotation marks, but I’ve always assumed that the man in the box is saying the words. Or perhaps he’s thinking the words. His lips, after all, are tightly sealed. I’ve taken the words to be something he believes or, given the seriousness of his expression, a bald statement of fact.
The man in the box comes to mind at moments when I’m willing think the worst of people. I’m tempted then to repeat the words out loud, to believe them, maybe to flog them as a raw certainty to convince someone to join me in the tight confines of my own little box. At moments like that I’m fortunate if my wife, Molly, is there to jerk me back. When she isn’t handy, some other splash of grace usually comes my way to save me from myself.
Then there are experiences that convince me that the little man has it all wrong, that he ought to crawl out of the box, put up a vacant sign, and move along to some useful activity. Or better yet, burn the box so no one else might be tempted to occupy it. I recently had an experience like this. Several of them, in fact.
Molly and I offered to recruit and coordinate the activities of more than 160 volunteers across a week of historic events in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City in mid-February. The activities culminated with the dedication of the new 2,000-seat Blessed Stanley Rother Church and Shrine. It would be difficult for us to think of a more rewarding way to have experienced that week than by working side by side with our dedicated volunteers in support of the beautiful, faithful people who turned out to honor our Oklahoma martyr. Not once that week did I think about Steig’s sour little man in the box.
Vespers in the presence of the body of Blessed Stanley Rother at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. (Credit - Avery Holt, Archdiocese of Oklahoma City)
The man I did think about, along with Molly and all our volunteers, the man we now refer to as Blessed Stanley, was and continues to be the kind of person who creeps up on you, someone easy to look past, to undervalue, to ignore. As a young farm boy from Okarche, Oklahoma, he aspired to the priesthood, but the first seminary he attended decided that he didn’t have what it takes. Archbishop Eusebius Beltran, our local ordinary at the time, was not swayed by that judgement. He saw in Rother something beyond his language aptitude. He saw a priest, and he arranged a second chance for him at a different seminary, Mount St. Mary’s, in Maryland, where Rother did make the grade. He was ordained in 1963 and, after some seasoning in Oklahoma, he accepted the challenge of ministering to indigenous Catholics in a miserably poor area of Guatemala.
The world is at last learning the story of Fr. Stanley Rother, how he won the hearts of his flock beside Lake Atitlan, how he proved to be the perfect combination of the pastoral and the practical, able to forgive sins and repair a motorbike, consecrate bread and wine but also teach his parishioners to improve their crop yields. And how, by supporting the abjectly poor and translating the New Testament into their native language, Tz’utujil, by taking their side against a repressive government, he earned a choice spot on that government’s death list. During a home visit to the family farm in early 1981, Rother was given the chance, perhaps even encouraged, to save his own skin by remaining in Oklahoma. Instead, he returned to St. Iago Atitlan to face what he must have known was inevitable, that his name would rise to the top of the death list, that his number would finally come up. And it did, on July 28 of that year, when assassins entered his rectory and shot him dead. Fr. Stephen Bird, now our Director of the Secretariat for Divine Worship, a young priest in 1981, remembers that, from that very moment, Rother’s fellow priests in Oklahoma thought of him not as an unfortunate victim of political violence but as a Catholic martyr.
Thirty-six years later, on September 23, 2017, a year after papal approval, Rother was beatified before a crowd of 18,000 at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City. Two years after that, ground was broken for a shrine to be dedicated to him. And on Sunday, February 12 of this year, the long-awaited shrine dedication week began with the movement of the casket containing Blessed Stanley’s body from Resurrection Cemetery to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, in Oklahoma City, for vespers and an all-night vigil.
For this first event of the week, Molly and I organized two shifts of volunteers, eight per shift, and preached the gospel of “radical hospitality,” a term we learned from Nancy, beloved former HR director of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Nancy had been deeply involved in planning the beatification event in 2017.
As soon as we arrived at the cathedral, we began walking the line, talking with those waiting for the doors to open at four o’clock on this Superbowl Sunday. Their patience and cooperation humbled us all. By the time Archbishop Paul S. Coakley and a compliment of priests, deacons, and seminarians processed to the altar for the beginning of vespers at five o’clock, every seat in the cathedral had been filled and our ushers were standing visitors along the walls and in the back of the church.
Following vespers, the faithful crept up the cathedral’s center aisle toward the casket. Once there, they stood reverently, they knelt, they kissed the casket, spread their arms over it, held rosaries to it. Some wept. One young woman, about twenty years old, came up to me in the back of the church and said, “I’m part of a small group. We’re not Catholic. We want to go up and pay our respects with everyone else, but we don’t want to do anything that’s disrespectful. Can you tell us what to do?” Those are the moments when you just know that the heroic witness of a great man is reaching beyond his coddling Catholic community.
We encouraged our volunteers to take breaks when they needed. One volunteer, Mark, said, “I don’t need a break. These people are feeding me. I’m filled with energy.”
Past nine o’clock, when Molly and I left the cathedral, a thick line of pilgrims of all ages, all skin colors, of many ethnic backgrounds, snaked up the center aisle and around along a side wall. According to the Knights of Columbus, who remained beside the casket, swords drawn, through the night hours, visitors kept coming all night long and were there until the cathedral was locked at five the next morning. As the casket was being placed in the hearse for transportation to the shrine and its final resting place within the chapel altar, an impromptu motorcade, hazard lights flashing, formed to accompany the body along the way.
Several other events followed, but all of them pointed in the direction of the really big day, Friday, February 17, and the Dedication of the Shrine Church and Altar. The shrine is situated on fifty-two acres of land south of downtown Oklahoma City. It was designed in the Spanish Baroque style by the Washington, DC, architectural firm of Franck & Lohsen. In keeping with tradition, the cruciform church faces eastward. The chapel is located behind the main altar and sacristy. Outside the west entrance is a plaza, a Zocalo, with a large fountain and four spacious bosques. It can accommodate 6,000 visitors at a time. At the far western end of the campus is Tepeyac Hill, our recreation of the Mexico City hill of that name where Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego.
Tepeyac Hill, Dedication Day, Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine. (Credit – Chris Porter)
It was 22 degrees when our volunteers began arriving at seven o’clock on that Friday morning. A handful of them were assigned to the Pilgrim Center to work in the museum and gift shop. More than forty went into the church to serve as ushers. Two of them, Kirk and Chris, took on the job of lead ushers. Many volunteers kept their warm coats on and headed out to the Zocalo to welcome our visitors, some of whom, it was said, had been standing at the church entrance for hours. Steve, another volunteer, had agreed to coordinate things out on the Zocalo.
For hours after we all arrived, the line outside the west entrance of the shrine grew and grew, at one point snaking all the way to Tepeyac Hill. Our Sunday evening experience at the cathedral had convinced us that there would be no pushing and shoving, no unruliness on dedication day. We were not disappointed. Everyone appeared happy to be part of this extraordinary event. Some had traveled from distant states on the chance they’d make it into the shrine for the Mass of Dedication.
At 9:30 a “welcome group” led by Rosemary began admitting attendees with passes through the north wing door. Our ushers, by this point trained and working as a team, greeted and escorted them to their seats. At 10:30 sharp, one of the west entrance doors was opened and those without passes, excited and filled with anticipation, began entering the shrine fifty at a time. Several Latinas who had been singing beautifully in Spanish outside the church fell silent when they entered the Narthex. “No, don’t stop,” we insisted. “Sing. We love hearing you sing.” They started up again, and we heard them making music inside the nave of the church nearly until Mass time. By 10:55 every available seat in the church had been filled. Only four hundred or so were to remain on the Zocalo unable to get in but watching the Mass on large TV screens.
At 11:00 the live stream began with an ancient ceremony and a knock at the central door of the main entrance. Fr. Don Wolf, cousin of Fr. Rother and pastor of this new parish, was the first to walk through the main door. There followed, accompanied by organ and trumpets and tympani and joyful voices singing “Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation,” a procession of dozens of bishops, nearly a hundred priests, deacons, seminarians, Knights of Columbus and of Peter Claver and of Malta, the Equestrian Order, representatives of the Building Committee and the Shrine Board, and, finally, Archbishop Coakley, who had envisioned this day from the moment of the beatification. EWTN took the event to the world.
The procession enters, Dedication Day, Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine. (Credit – Chris Porter)
The Mass and all the rituals associated with the dedication of a church and altar were, according to all who witnessed them, sublime. But when you are serving as an usher or a volunteer, you tend to focus on what will happen next and what must be done to prepare for it. Molly served as the very first lector, reading that beautiful passage from the Book of the Prophet Nehemiah, the one that tells of Ezra preaching on the street in Jerusalem, the reestablishment of the covenant between the Jewish people and God following the Babylonian exile. Sadly, I didn’t have a chance to listen to her reading. Like the other volunteers, I was distracted, asking myself one question after another. Is everything going smoothly on the Zocalo? Better check. What about the Pilgrim Center? Is it time to get out the baskets and boxes for the collection? How about the umbrellas we’ll use when accompanying the priests for communion on the Zocalo? Anybody need a break?
The Mass ended and the huge recession began after 1:30 in the afternoon. But even as the archbishop was walking from the altar toward the Narthex, our volunteers were on the move, taking up positions around the main altar in the church and in the chapel. Everyone, the nearly two thousand who were able to witness the Mass inside the church as well as the hundreds on the Zocalo, would want to get a closer look at the retablo, crafted in northern Italy by Ferdinand Stuflesser, and visit the chapel to see the mural by EverGreene Architectural Arts of New York and to pray in the presence of the body of Blessed Stanley. Ushers and volunteers had to control the flow of foot traffic, but no one complained about delays.
As things settled into a rhythm, the shrine began to do what a shrine is supposed to do. It drew people in. Less than an hour after the Mass had ended, I saw two young men standing in front of the main altar. They wore tee shirts. One of them asked me, “What’s this all about?” “Were you here for the Mass?” I asked. “No, we work for the city and we were just driving by and saw this big church and all the people.” “Well, you’ve just missed the dedication of the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother. Ever heard of him?” “No.” That was my segue. I told them about our Oklahoma hero. Minutes later these guys were having their picture taken with Art, from Washington, DC, one of the architects who designed the shrine. And shortly after that I saw Art, with the same two fellows, pointing out architectural details in the chapel.
I acted as docent for a couple who live in the neighborhood, watched the shrine go up, and wanted to have a look. Molly took a Methodist couple, from Norman, through the chapel, around the church, and over to the museum. They said they were going to post pictures on Facebook and encourage their friends to visit the shrine. In the presence of heroism like Blessed Stanley’s, there seem to be no boundaries between religions. Blessed Stanley belongs to everyone.
Reverencing the first class relic in the Blessed Stanley Rother Chapel, Dedication Day, Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine. (Credit – Steve Sisney)
For the rest of the afternoon, visitors walked about the church. The chapel remained active with pilgrims eager to kneel and pray for a moment, to light a votive candle, or to touch the first-class relic at the base of the lifelike statue of Blessed Stanley on the west wall. At a quarter to five, reluctantly, we had to announce that the shrine would have to be locked up in fifteen minutes. We hated asking anyone to leave.
For this final event of dedication week, we had rallied more than a hundred volunteers. Dozens of them had arrived at the parking lot at sunrise and remained on their feet until after 2:00. A number considered themselves lucky to have a drink of water during their long shift, let alone a snack bar. In the days afterwards, our volunteers sent us email comments like the following. From Angie: “[I] was so inspired by those that traveled so far to be at the shrine on Friday.” From Mark: “I was humbled to be in the midst of so many people who were devoted to Bl. Stanley Rother’s legacy.” From Charmi: “Glory to God…[It] was amazing help[ing] the [L]ord with this amazing [mission].” From Damon: “It was truly a once in a lifetime experience. Hopefully, we’ll all be gathering again soon for Blessed Stanley’s canonization.” From Anna: “I am grateful for the opportunity to help at the dedication and to meet a great group of people who made it all happen.”
Molly and I are natives of Louisiana. We moved here immediately following the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which took 168 lives. As newcomers we observed that Oklahoma people have a way of coming together in time of need and taking care of business. We call it the “Oklahoma Standard,” and it’s what we saw all week in our volunteers. They never complained. They just got the job done. And it was fitting that they did it all to honor Blessed Stanley Rother, another Oklahoman who quietly went about his business and got the job done. It was an honor for us to work in cooperation with them, and to do it all in recognition of Blessed Stanley, a man of God, a servant of his people, and a hero to us all.
