“My life in his providence”: Remembering Blessed James Miller
I’ve always felt a special attraction to the saints and their lives and witness have had an immeasurable impact on my own faith and vocational journey. One of the realities of the Church’s calendar, however, is that the vast majority of these holy people are not included in the sanctoral cycle. Even the individual calendars of nations and religious communities do not include all the canonized or beatified people associated with those places or religious families.
On February 13, the Church remembers a De La Salle Christian Brother who was born and raised in the United States and who died as a martyr in Guatemala in 1982. Although he is not included in the Universal Calendar or the liturgical calendar of the United States, we can still honor this holy man by sharing his story and asking for his intercession, particularly in those parts of the world that are wracked by violence and war.
His story:
James Alfred Miller was born in 1944 to a family of farmers in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. He entered the De La Salle Christian Brothers after his freshman year of high school and, when he began his novitiate in 1962, he received the religious name “Brother Leo William.” (Like many religious women and men in the years following the Second Vatican Council, he eventually returned to the use of his baptismal name and was known as Brother James or Hermano Santiago.) Brother James would later earn a master’s degree in Spanish from Saint Mary’s University in Minnesota. Liked by his fellow students and confreres, he was remembered as a simple, hard worker. Brother James taught high school for five years in Minnesota but longed to serve in the foreign missions. His dream was fulfilled when, in 1969, he was assigned to one of his community’s schools in Bluefields, Nicaragua.
“The level of personal violence is reaching appalling proportions (murders, tortures, kidnappings, threats) and the Catholic Church is being persecuted because of its option for the poor and oppressed. God knows why he continues to call me to Guatemala…and I pray to God for the grace and strength to serve Him faithfully by my presence among the poor and oppressed. I place my life in His providence; I place my trust in Him.”
Taken from a letter Blessed James Miller wrote to his family at Christmas 1981
In 1974, he was assigned to direct the Brothers’ school in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, and during that time he also oversaw construction of ten new rural schools. During the Nicaraguan Revolution, Brother James was forced to return to the United States for his own safety. In 1979 and 1980 he taught at Cretin-Derham Hall High School in St. Paul, Minnesota (where he had begun his teaching career). Although he understood the risks, he longed to return to Latin America and finally received permission to do so in January 1981, assigned to the De La Salle Brothers’ secondary school in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. Brother James worked at a center dedicated to helping young Mayan students develop job and leadership skills. He also helped direct an experimental farming program. Because of tensions with the Guatemalan government—who would often round up the students from the Center and conscript them into the army—Brother James often found himself working for the release of his students. This work placed him at odds with the government officials.
“I am personally weary of violence, but I continue to feel a strong commitment to the suffering poor of Central America… the Church is being persecuted because of its option for the poor. Aware of numerous dangers and difficulties, we continue working with faith and hope and trusting in God’s providence.”—Blessed James Miller
On February 13, 1982—two days after obtaining the release of some students—Brother James was shot at point blank range by hooded assailants as he was working to repair a wall at the center. He died instantly; he was thirty-seven years old. It is believed that he was martyred because of his and the Christian Brothers’ efforts to protect their Mayan students from kidnapping and forced military service.
Commenting on the beatification of Blessed James Miller in 2019, Pope Francis reflected: “He was killed in hatred of the faith in 1982, in the context of the civil war. May the martyrdom of this exemplary educator of young people, who paid with his life for his service to the Guatemalan people and Church, strengthen paths of justice, peace and solidarity in that dear nation.”
Blessed James Miller, pray for us.
