After His Resurrection, when He appeared to His disciples, Jesus said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Then, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Impelled by the breath of life, like a wave through humanity the apostles and their descendants spread. Eighteen centuries later, their tide lapped on a farther shore of prairie and forest: the land of the Lakota.

At its start, Holy Rosary Mission was part of another unfortunate flood. The same westward expansion that delivered Christianity to the Lakota brought less salutary things, too. Fierce battles were won and lost. Near the Mission's beginning was the end of a beloved way of life. No more the buffalo; no more the fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters lost to the struggle for continued Lakota independence.

Somehow, across this chasm of culture and jagged grief, here and there, new hope spread among the Lakota like dotted wildflowers in buffalo grass. Early Lakota catechists, including Chief Red Cloud and the Oglala medicine man, Black Elk, spread the word about the promises of Jesus to their families. Later, they would be joined in the various communities by catechists like Phillip Fast Horse of Allen, William Randall, Louis Mousseaux and Edward White Crow of Wanblee, and Silas Fills The Pipe and Ivan Star Comes Out of Red Shirt Table and No Water.

By the time Holy Rosary Mission and its parishes were established, their humble vitality was proof that Jesus' breath of life in the upper room was now the wind of God.

Since its beginning, trust and reverence have marked it: from the early meetings between Fr. DeSmet and the Lakota that flowered into the simple faith of early Lakota Catechists, to today's mission to help educate and prepare Oglala Lakota children for the challenges of the twenty first century.

As part of its legacy, the Mission has the humble faith of women and men like St. Katharine Drexel and Chief Red Cloud. Now they have the vision and energy of Lakota men and women for modern challenges. When the late Steven Red Elk of St. Agnes Parish in Manderson became the first Native American ordained a deacon in the United States, time came to recognize this truth: as the spirit had been sent, so, too, Lakota Catholics must now send the spirit. A circle had been formed.