Next to the entrance of the historic parish church in Santiago Atitlán hangs a large photo banner above the side altar where Rother’s heart and blood are entombed. There is an image of Father Stanley Rother celebrating Mass, along with the words proclaimed by Jesus, “No hay amor más grande que dar la vida por sus amigos” (“There is no greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”).
The martyr’s seminary friend, Archbishop Harry J. Flynn, said it best: “Stanley Rother, in my estimation, had taken on so much of the beauty of Jesus Christ and his strength and gentility that his death was a final act of real transformation.”
May we model that kind of love in our own little ways!
—from St. Anthony Messenger‘s “Let Us Pray: Love Will Keep Us Together“
by María Ruiz Scaperlanda
