Props for Father Daniel

Father Daniel Durken died on Saturday, March 29, at the age of 85. For me, he will always be the model of what a priest should be and can be. Hard working, fully engaged with Scripture, prayer and with people, he was a delight right up to the end.

He was ordained in 1956 and served as a weekend priest in parishes until 2007. When I worked in the office next to him at Liturgical Press, he would drive down to St. Clement’s, an African-American parish on Minneapolis’s Northeast side, and help the resident priest by giving the Masses on Saturday night and Sunday. He said the teenagers there called him “Father Props.”

This was due to his penchant for using props in his homilies. (He also loved puns and alliteration, and wore black turtlenecks monogrammed with his initials, DDD.) The first homily I heard him give was at Saint John’s Abbey church. It was up in the choir stalls, a congregation made up primarily of his confreres and also a few of us lay people. He opened his homily by noting that the kings had arrived at the nativity scene but that something was missing. He had driven out to the local gas station before Mass to rectify the situation. With that, he opened a paper bag and took out three boxes of cigarettes. “Camels,” he said, and went down to line them up by the nativity.

There’s not really anything to that story, except that Fr. Daniel got my attention. In a setting that was often serious, and even, dare I say, competitive, when it came to homilies, he reminded us that Epiphany was a great and joyful celebration. When I remember Fr. Daniel, as when I remember Sr. Ruth Nierengarten, I will remember his smile and laughter, his joy, more than anything.

Father Daniel loved people, and I think this is the best possible quality for a priest. There was no ego in this love, no sense ever that it was about him, his popularity or anything else. He was genuinely interested in what was going on in people’s lives. This made him a great editor of The Abbey Banner, the abbey’s magazine. He loved finding out interesting things about his brother monks, but he also loved hearing the stories of employees at the abbey’s other businesses: the wood shop, the university, the fire station, the prep school. Everyone was interesting to him and he delighted in learning about their lives and telling their stories. I helped him in the last few years of editing to assemble the files for the magazine before it went off to the graphic designer. He was organized and able to understand quite a bit about computers, but still needed some assistance gathering photos from e-mails and resizing them, getting the stories and photos all together on a disk at the end of the process. It was a delightful job.

In addition to serving at Mass and in the local prison, Fr. Daniel had two other careers. He was a teacher, both a theology and speech professor at Saint John’s University, and a visiting professor of theology and lecturer in many other settings. From 1978 until his death, he worked for Liturgical Press, beginning with a decade as the director of the press.

We often noted how extraordinary this career was. He began at the top, as director, but with a very clear vision that he wouldn’t continue as director more than a decade. Though he was very good at it, and still clearly had energy for the task, he voluntarily stepped back after a decade, so that someone else’s ideas could come into play. He had a quality I see in mature spiritual people– he was so secure in who he was that he was free to act in all sorts of capacities. His talents were loosed upon the world for all our benefit. Beyond the directorate he wrote and edited, and embraced technology to make tools and materials available to priests and church personnel.

When I worked alongside him from 2006-2008 he was a bright spot in my day. He was still actively editing manuscripts and, in addition to the Abbey Banner, he was in charge of the Homily Hints and Daily Scripture Reflections for a product called the Loose Leaf Lectionary. This was an insert for busy priests to help them with daily Mass. It included the complete order for daily Mass with the readings and prayers, and also a 250-word reflection on the scripture readings of the day. These were meant as suggestions for the priest to develop into homilies, but who has time to do that when you’re in a busy parish and saying Mass daily?! I am sure many priests read them out verbatim.

Daniel asked if I’d like to try my hand at some reflections, and he gave me a short course in homiletics. He encouraged me to think first and foremost about who is in the pews. We know that at daily Mass it is probably mostly women, almost entirely elderly men and women. Offer some encouragement. Make them feel good and strong on their long spiritual journey. Comfort them in their mourning and physical pain. Bless them by opening up something about the Word they might not have heard before.

He liked the pieces I wrote, continued to advise me about them, and later invited me to write some of the Sunday Homily Hints. This is probably the biggest gift he gave me– he introduced me to the Lectionary in a deeper way than I’d ever experienced it sitting in the pews. He showed me how it works and invited me to bring my heart and mind to the text to share with others. In our last conversation, over lunch a month ago, I told him I was still writing the daily reflections and still thinking about who was in those pews, trying to bring them comfort. We agreed, the three elderly priests and I, at the lunch table in the Abbey retirement center, that the last thing the elder faithful need, is a lesson in the cost of discipleship.

At that lunch he also asked what else I was writing. He was a great fan of Habits. I told him I was working on a novel and he wanted to know what it was about. Over that lunch he asked me at least three times when it would be finished and when he could read it. There was a real urgency. He was very frail after a several-month bout with a respiratory illness. It was a little shocking to see him. But his mind was so sharp, as sharp as ever, and so was his enthusiasm about reading. He said he needed to get in touch with the press to get another manuscript to proofread for them. I promised I would bring a draft of the novel as soon as it was ready to read.

And I left that lunch with a real sense of urgency in my revision work. I was revising so Fr. Daniel could read the book. A couple weeks later I felt like I could give him the first 100 pages even if I hadn’t gotten to the end. I printed them out and even called to arrange dropping it by, but didn’t get him or a return to my message. I also started thinking I really did want it to be better before I gave it to him. I took it out and started making changes. I wanted him to be proud of me and have something good to read.

I was still carrying around the manuscript in my backpack when I read online that he had died. Although his death didn’t surprise me, it was too soon; I was hoping we’d have more time.

Five years ago, after a Mass he gave for the employees of Liturgical Press, on a Marian feast that was also a Holy Day of Obligation, a friend and I left saying, “Wow, he is really something.” I said, “When he is gone, and those of his generation, we won’t see their like on this earth again.” It wasn’t anything Father Daniel said that day that had impressed us, not his wit or his scholarship or his voice, which was not particularly fine. It was simply his presence and his engagement, with the Mass, Scripture, and with the people.

I do know other priests like Father Daniel, and a few of them are young men. I recognize them by their interest in their parishioners, their lack of ego, and their joy. The priests of this generation, though, Father Daniel, and also my friends Father Wilfred Theisen and the Jesuit Father George Wilson, have given me a real glimpse of what the church is at its heart, and what it can and should be.