Dear Stan,
          We never met in person, but I remember the first time I heard about you. It was back in 1981, a month after I was ordained a priest. I read an article about a missionary from Oklahoma killed in Guatemala.
          Since then, I’ve read a book about you, The Shepherd Who Didn’t Run, and watched YouTube videos of you as a farm boy packing hay bales on a wagon and showing Angus steers at a county fair. Three years ago, you were beatified by the Church. 
          Given all this, it’s presumptuous to think of you as a good friend and brother. But I do. Blame it on my roots. You see, I too grew up packing bales and showing cattle at stock shows.
          My oldest brother, by the way, is the same age as you. He and I shared a bedroom with two other brothers. The four of us wore each other’s coveralls and milked the same cows. We wrestled in straw mows and fought like roosters. I was the youngest of the bunch. I would not admit it back then, but I admired them and wanted to be just like them.
          Now that I’m acquainted with you, it’s as though I have a brother who is also a martyr to the faith. You’ve raised the bar high, Stan! You not only volunteered for mission work in Guatemala, when civil war broke out, you sheltered young men from the guerillas and searched for parishioners who turned up missing. When your own name appeared on a hit-list, your bishop called you home. Reluctantly, you obeyed.
          Of course, it didn’t take you long to convince him to send you back. You reminded him that a shepherd doesn’t abandon his sheep at the first sign of dangert. So, you returned during Holy Week and, like Christ entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, your people were ecstatic.
          A few months later, three men broke into your rectory at night to haul you off. But you fought with your fists, as any man would. In the end, they took you down the only way they could, with a bullet.
         I never volunteered to serve in a foreign mission, Stan, and I never had to fight with my fists. But there was a time when I searched abandoned buildings for a teenage girl abducted by a rapist. I knew a family whose cousin was tortured and killed by a drug cartel. I’ve fought anger in my gut as I ministered to women bruised by violent lovers.
         Call it sibling rivalry. Call it trying to measure up to a brother who gave his all. Call it the reason why I stand in front of your picture each morning, asking God to make me one-tenth of the priest you were.
         Pray for me, brother. Pray for me.

[This article previously appeared the Winter 2022 issue of Catholic Rural Life Magazine.]