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Fr. Anthony Rosevear, OP
“A city set on a hill cannot be hidden” the scriptures tell us and such was the town I grew up in;
Butte, Montana. Situated a mile high in the Continental divide in central western Big Sky Country, it
resembled a diamond necklace spread on black velvet when viewed by night from the pass through the highlands
above it. The daylight revealed a less attractive picture of a dusty and ramshackle mining camp where copper
ruled the economy and where women wore the latest fashions in its business district and cowboys and miners
quenched their thirst at one of its many corner bars and shot up the town when politics, liquor and tempers
squared off. I love having my roots firmly set in those grand rugged mountains where my grandparents had
come to settle, link their genealogies and make their meager fortunes.
For such
a small place it had a rather cosmopolitan atmosphere having pockets of the town representative of a great
number of the national cities of the planet. The Irish ran it, the Jews clothed it and the Italians fed it
they always said. Salt of the earth, generous people provided its sparse populous. They were as tough as the
land they burrowed into or raised livestock or crops on to feed their kin. I was born in February when the
land had long forgotten the warmth of Montana Indian summer and the buds of a distant Spring were hard to
imagine; first son to my parents, following the arrival of their first born daughter seven years earlier. It
remained just the four of us until my sister left home for school and her own life journey when I was in
fifth grade.
Butte was a Catholic town, with nine parishes and schools staffed by religious
sisters. My first instruction came at St. John the Evangelist parish and then continued with the Irish
Christian Brothers at an all boys high school. Vocation simmered in an ignored pot on the back of the stove
as I carried on with my education. I guess I always knew I would have to face those deeper questions of
direction someday but why waste a good time now with thoughts becoming too weighty. The college years took
me to Spokane, Washington; the real Big City, and Gonzaga University, where I focused on Speech Pathology,
Art, and Education, dabbling in drama and already preparing myself for a junior year abroad in Florence,
Italy. The white and black habits of Dominican friars caught my eye there as we walked to our daily classes,
but I never dreamed I would one day mirror their commitment.
The simmering pot finally boiled over and brought me to face the decisions that led me
to California and the Novitiate of the Order of Preachers. Community, Prayer, ministry and the stimulating
intellectual tradition piqued my interest. Initially, I must admit I was a bit intimidated by the prospect
of preaching before large groups of people. I wasn’t cutting myself the slack to learn such a skill over the
years of formation that lay ahead. Twenty five of us in seventy-one bridged eras from pre Vatican II in
which many of had served the Latin Mass to the modern Church with its many changes and excitement.
Ordained in 1978 I immediately had the opportunity to travel and preach with a musical
group of our friars called the Pilgrim Friars. I also accompanied a group of our novices to Sitka, Alaska
for a summer of ministry in which I was the only Catholic priest in the town and superior to five new
friars. My first regular assignment was to the Cathedral parish of St. Thomas in Reno, Nevada. Situated
between the bus station and the casinos, our Church was a site of busy activity both day and night. We were
kept busy with a significant street ministry, but we also tried to teach classes in the parish and enhance
the liturgical life of the community with our Dominican traditions. After three years, I was asked by our
province to be the vocation director, a most rewarding position I held for ten years. During part of that
time I moved from our community at St. Albert Priory in Oakland to St. Dominic Priory in San Francisco. I
eventually served as Prior there during a busy time of retrofitting and restoring the Church. The
crystal cold waters of the McKenzie River in Oregon passes by a retreat facility that we Dominicans have and
it was there that I went next for a year as chaplain.
The pastorate of Our Lady of the Mountain parish in Ashland, Oregon came open the next
year and I was transferred to fill that position. At the conclusion of my time with the wonderful people of
Ashland, I was given a sabbatical in which I participated in a Spanish language program in Madrid, Spain,
lived with our Dominican community in Salamanca and then walked the 500 mile Camino de Santiago across
northern Spain. This is an ancient pilgrimage route to the shrine which houses the remains of St. James, one
of the first apostles to follow Jesus. The experience of pilgrimage, of placing my feet on the path that St.
Francis, Bridget of Sweden, King St. Louis of France and millions of ordinary saints and sinners had trod,
was a life changing adventure. It was a great preparation for my next ministry, that of being novice master
for our Order on the West Coast. The novitiate year is its own pilgrimage and holds many of the same
experiences spiritually that had touched my life in Spain. Now into my seventh novitiate class, I am blessed
to have been a part of the religious journey of many of our young Dominican friars. What an ideal to share
and continue to struggle to live faithfully and so the journey continues....
Updated: September 27, 2006
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