OKARCHE, Okla. — Catholics across Oklahoma, Arkansas and Guatemala will celebrate Saturday the first feast day for Stanley Rother, a priest from Okarche who was killed in 1981 while serving as a missionary in Guatemala. 
Last September, Rother became the first U.S.-born priest and first U.S. martyr to be beatified — a crucial step toward canonization as a saint, and a status in Catholicism honored with a feast day and the title "blessed." 
"A feast day is a day designated by the Catholic Church to honor saints and blesseds," according to a press release from the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. "The Church assigns one date out of the year for each saint, usually on the date of death. The saints are remembered on their feast days with special mention, prayers and sometimes with special scripture readings."
In honor of Rother's feast day, and his roots in Okarche, the Most Rev. Paul S. Coakley, Archbishop of Oklahoma City, will lead Mass at 5 p.m. Saturday at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, 211 Missouri in Okarche. Members of the Rother family will be in attendance.
A special Mass also will be celebrated in Rother's honor at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, 110 N. Madison, at 8 a.m. Saturday, including a relic of Rother and medals depicting Rother for each family.
The relic, medals and special prayers and preaching focused on Rother also will be offered at the regularly scheduled services over the weekend, at 5 p.m. Saturday, 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. and the 1 p.m. Spanish service Sunday at St. Francis, and at the 9 a.m. and 11:45 a.m. Sunday services at St. Gregory the Great Catholic Church, 1924 W. Willow.
The Rev. Kelly Edwards, associate pastor at St. Francis, said it's a special occasion to be able to venerate a blessed martyr who grew up in Oklahoma.
"It's special to have a blessed who is from our very state," Edwards said. "For someone who is recognized as a blessed by the Catholic Church to have grown up an hour south of here is a very unique situation."
Coakley has provided readings for parishes to use to honor Rother’s life and martyrdom, and encouraged parishes to remember Rother this weekend.
“He is a model of priestly holiness and fidelity," Coakley said in the press release. "He came from an ordinary home and a small town, growing up on a farm where he learned to work hard. He knew the importance of family and community."
Coakley said Rother offers a powerful example to follow, both for lay people and clergy.
“He placed all his natural gifts and talents at the service of his priestly ministry and missionary endeavors," Coakley said. "With so many challenges facing our priests today, here is a priest we can embrace and celebrate – the shepherd who didn’t run.”
Rother was ordained a priest in 1963 for the then-Diocese of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, serving in various parishes throughout the state. Five years later, he volunteered to serve as a missionary priest at the Oklahoma mission in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala.
He put his Oklahoma farming experience to work in Guatemala, where he served for 13 years, helping farmers develop new techniques, establishing a co-op, helping create a school, a clinic and a radio station, and translating the New Testament into the villagers’ native Mayan language.
By late 1980, the Guatemalan civil war reached Rother's parish, and with it paramilitary squads that tortured and executed members of the local populace believed to oppose the government. 
Rother's parishioners began to disappear, "leaving him to claim their tortured bodies days later," according to the press release. 
His work educating and building up the faith of the poor soon earned Rother a spot on a death list, meant to dissuade or eliminate those seen as aiding government opposition.
Rother returned to Oklahoma one last time for the ordination of his cousin, Father Don Wolf, who is pastor of Saint Eugene Catholic Church in Oklahoma City, according to the press release. He returned to Santiago Atitlan, saying “a shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger.”
In the early morning hours of July 28, 1981, three masked men entered the rectory at Santiago Atitlán and executed Rother. His blood reportedly still stains the walls of the room.
Edwards, associate pastor at St. Francis Xavier, said Rother's example of courage and self-sacrificial love is one from which Christians can draw inspiration and strength.
"The thing that's so special about him is, he knew he was under penalty of death, but he loved his people so much, he went back anyway, knowing he would probably die," Edwards said of Rother. "Like Christ, he kept up his ministry, even though he knew it would cost him his life."
Rother’s body was returned to Oklahoma and is buried in a crypt in Oklahoma City. His heart remained in Guatemala and is enshrined at Saint James. 
Plans are in the works to move Rother's remains to a new shrine and 2,000-seat church being built in Oklahoma City.
Rother's feast day will be celebrated each year on July 28, the anniversary of his death. The feast day currently is recognize throughout the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, the Diocese of Tulsa, the Diocese of Little Rock and the Diocese of Sololá in Guatemala. 
To learn more about Rother and the shrine, visit blessedstanleyrother.org.