Father Elias Mary Mills, F.I., a Nebraska native and a seasoned missionary priest with extensive experience promoting devotion to Our Lady, recently returned to his home state to lead a retreat at Our Lady of Good Counsel Retreat Center near Waverly. He has traveled to places such as Australia and Italy sharing his message of hope in Our Lady and trust in the Lord.
Dennis Kellogg, director of communications for the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln, talked with Father Elias before his retreat about his Nebraska roots, consecration to Mary, and Mary’s message to the world today. What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation.
Dennis Kellogg, Southern Nebraska Register: For you, it all began in Nebraska. You’re from Kearney.
Father Elias Mary Mills, F.I.: Yes, I’m a Cornhusker through and through. I say I bleed red and blue – red for Cornhuskers and blue for Our Lady.
SNR: You went to Peru State and Kearney State College, became a Third-Order Carmelite and went to Holy Apostles Seminary in Connecticut, where you met the Franciscans of the Immaculate. And you were eventually ordained a priest by Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of the Diocese of Lincoln.
Fr. Elias: In 1999, I was sent to Italy for an experience. And at that time, they said, if you make your final profession, if you’re going to be ordained a priest, it might be by Pope John Paul II. We found out that he was no longer ordaining anyone other than seminarians from the Diocese of Rome. So I said to myself, the next-best bishop, after Pope John Paul II, to me, was Bishop Fabian (Bruskewitz), because he was so, so, so Catholic and such a zealous man for the faith. So I said I’d like to be ordained back in Nebraska by Bishop Fabian, and also so that my mother and my family could attend.... In May of 2000 I was ordained a priest by Bishop Fabian...
My first assignment… was in Western Australia; our mission was in the Archdiocese of Perth, and we were out in the bush in a little town which was like a lot of rural towns in Nebraska... I was there until 2003 and then I came back to the United States and have been in different friaries since then.
SNR: You and the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate are so devoted to Mary. What do you think is the message Mary has for the world we live in today?
Fr. Elias: I think the thing that we’ve tried to do is promote the understanding of being totally consecrated to her. The message is from our Lord on the cross Himself. When he looked down, he said, “Woman, behold your Son. Son, behold your mother.” … (And John) took her into his home.
I think that the message is that not Our Lady herself, but her Son is saying is, “Please take Mary, my mother, to be your mother. Take her into your home, because she is the means by which I’ve come to you.”
As St. Louis de Montfort says, “I came to you as a child of Mary. The way for you to best come back to me is to be a child of Mary, to put yourself totally into her hands and into her care, to be totally consecrated to her.” As St. Maximillian Kolbe said, “She’s the surest, easiest and quickest way to Christ.” I think that’s what our Lord wants is everybody to go to his mother... It’s not that there’s too much Mary, there’s not enough.
SNR: We’re at the Our Lady of Good Counsel Retreat House in Waverly. You’re here to give a retreat on Our Lady and the brown scapular. Tell us about that spiritual weapon.
Fr. Elias: It’s probably, after the rosary, the most popular sacramental. And of course, it all originated in 1251, when St. Simon Stock, who was a Carmelite Father General, was praying to Our Lady because they were in danger of being suppressed. And Our Lady appeared to him and held out the scapular and said, “Receive the habit of your order. Whosoever shall die wearing this habit will not suffer the fires of hell.”
And so Our Lady is saying, “I am your protection.” We don’t go enough to her. We need to turn to her... Our Lady has been working miracles for those who take this scapular and wear it out of faith and confidence in what she says is true: “If you wear this as a sign that you’re mine, then I too will be yours.”
And then we have this special covenant, you might say, or contract. “If you are faithful to me and you do your part, I will always be faithful to you.” And of course, sometimes when we’re not faithful, Our Lady is still faithful to us. But that pledge of my gift of myself is a sign of that scapular, and it’s also a sign of Our Lady’s promise that she has your back, you might say. That she’s always going to be watching out for you.
SNR: People look out and they see a culture that has gone astray. They see there are people who are leaving the Church. Some people are saying we live in troubled times. What’s your message of comfort or of hope that you would have to those people who are worried at this time?
Fr. Elias: Every age of the Church has always had its trials and difficulties…. The one thing that is constant is God’s love for us, and of course, his mother’s always there for us throughout every age....
There are two things that we should always look to, no matter what age of the Church we’re in – devotion to Our Lady and her Son’s Eucharist. Those are the two things that are going to get us through any difficulty. It’s Jesus and Mary. Those are the two people that we should place our confidence in, because they’re the ones that have paid the ultimate price for us—Christ by His death on the cross, and Our Lady … by her offering herself with her Son. So that should be our hope... Our strength is in the Lord and in His holy mother.
I remember, there’s a story about Colonel (John W.) Ripley. He was one of the most decorated Marines, and he got a Medal of Valor for doing something very heroic. He was the only one who stood (before) 80,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. He had to blow up this bridge that existed for crossing the river, and he was the only one there. He had to do jungle walking, you know, bars underneath the bridge to get to where he had to plant the explosives. And he was at the end of his physical strength. But the thing he kept saying that got him through it was, “Jesus, Mary, get me there. Jesus, Mary, get me there. Jesus, Mary, get me there.”
That, to me, is what we need to be praying every day, when we wake up in the morning and before we go to bed at night, is, “Jesus, Mary, get me there.” Because that’s our strength, and that’s how we’re going to go through anything, and that’s how we will have the grace. Our Lord’s not going to take away our crosses. He’s just going to give us the strength to carry them, because the cross is where we have our salvation, and it’s where we can get our merit from carrying our crosses, not running away from them. So I think that ultimately that has to be our motto and our constant theme: “Jesus, Mary, get me there.”
Watch the entire video interview with Father Elias Mary Mills, F.I. on the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln YouTube channel:
