HANSON - Rev. Msgr. Donald M., on Friday January 17, 2025. Ordained a priest of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, NY, on May 29, 1971. Named a Chaplain of His Holiness on December 10, 2004. Served as Associate Pastor of Our Lady of Loretto, Hempstead, St. Agnes, Rockville Centre, St. Margaret of Scotland, Selden. Served as Director at Office of Catechesis and Worship. Msgr. Hanson was appointed Vice Rector of the American College of the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, where American seminarians studied philosophy and theology. He was fluent in Dutch and French. Served as Pastor of St. Joseph, Babylon, Our Lady of Hope, Carle Place, Most Holy Trinity, East Hampton. Msgr. Hanson was in residence at St. Louis de Montfort, Sound Beach, where he continued to serve in retirement. Wake Monday, January 20, 2025 from 2PM to 5PM at St. Louis de Montfort. Vigil Mass Monday, January 20, 2025, at 7:30PM at St. Louis de Montfort. Funeral Mass Tuesday, January 21, 2025 at 11AM at St. Louis de Montfort. Interment to follow at Holy Rood Cemetery. Arrangements under the direction of O.B. Davis Funeral Home.
Homily for the Funeral of Rev. Msgr. Donald M. Hanson January 21, 2025
Gospel: John 14:1-6 The Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Fr. Bill Hanson, Mary Immaculate, Bellport, NY
Come with me in your imagination as I return in my memory to le Metro de Paris, the Paris subway. It’s the Spring of 1990. We are at a busy central station, and I leave Don to go to the money exchange. He has been living in Europe working as the Vice Rector of the American College of the Catholic University of Louvain. With Bishop McGann’s kind permission he has been mentoring students studying theology for their ministry back here in the States. He told me the real reason why he was invited to take this job was because he was fluent in French and Flemish and could talk to the household staff and the plumbers and electricians in their own language.
As I return from the bureau-de-change with my francs (not euros yet, you can see how long ago this was) I see Don in his beret, jauntily askew on his head, in a lively discussion with a young French woman. Entirely in French of course. She is departing as I am arriving and I ask him, “What was that all about?” “Well,” he said, “She wanted to know how to get to the Blue Line.” “And what did you say?” “Well I asked her where she was going, and she said, Poissy, and I said ‘You can’t get there on the Blue Line, you have to take the Red Line.”
“And exactly how did you know that?” I asked. His response was, “I read maps.”
“I am the Way” I know the Way.
Don was soon finishing his 5-year stint in Belgium and I figured this was my chance to see a bit of Europe with a personal guide who knew his way around. This way I wouldn’t have to do anything but follow his lead. As a matter of fact he read maps so well, that he travelled by train all over Europe in the 5 years he lived there, and knew the schedules and directions by heart. We were traveling together for 2 weeks starting in Leuven and Brussels, on to Chartres and Paris, then overnight to Florence and ending in Rome. But for a train strike we would have made it Assisi as well. No matter what city we were in the most amazing thing happened. As in the Metro, local people would come up to him and ask for directions. Finally back in New York we went from JFK to Manhattan to visit a store that sold model trains from around the world. He wanted a European model to commemorate his 5 years there as he was returning to the Diocese. While in the subway, a Latino couple came up to him, not me, and asked which train to take to 86th St. He replied, “Be sure and take the local because the express doesn’t stop at your station.”
So finally I said to him. “Don, I’m standing right next to you in cities all over Europe, and here in New York, I look just like you, I even sound like you, and nobody ever asks me for directions, they only ask you! Why is that? “Oh that’s simple,” he replied. “You look lost!” As Butch Cassidy said to the Sundance Kid, “Don’t sugar coated Sundance, give it to ‘em straight!”
“I am the Truth” I tell you like it is.
Don not only knew the geographical maps, he knew what he considered to be the map of the Church: The Liturgy. His favorite phrase was, “Lex orandi, lex credendi” the law of praying is the law of believing. For the church to know the way to go, it should follow the way we pray.
Many years ago, when I was stationed at St. Sylvester’s, not long after the Vatican Council ended, Fr. Andy Blake and Sr. Marie Brescia were introducing the staff and the parish to the restored Catechumenate. So I made the transition along with them from individual “convert instruction” to the communal catechumenate. We had so many candidates and catechumens that we were able to include several at each of the parish masses. Because of this, the whole parish was aware of what was happening and took their role as an assembly in the journey of these new members on their way to initiation, through the scrutinies and presentations during Lent.
In the years preceding our turn to the Catechumenate, we always struggled to get better attendance at the Easter Vigil. Perhaps half the church would be full or if good weather maybe three quarters. Never a full house. As we approached Holy Week and the Vigil, I was to be a kind of Master of Ceremonies to see that all the bits and pieces were in place. But what happened that night was beyond anything I had prepared for, or personally was prepared to experience. With no previous ”advertising” or encouragement we had 125% attendance! So many parishioners identified with the candidates and catechumens all during Lent, they were naturally inclined to be present for their initiation. The “whole” that evening was so much greater than the sum of its parts, that we were all left in amazement. I remember calling Don to tell him all about this and said finally in my attempt to put it into words, “Don, it was just like being at an Ordination!”
He replied, “That’s the problem! We should go to Ordinations and say, “It was just like being at a Baptism!”
Now a number of years later and several Notre Dame trained successors after Don was in the Liturgy Office, I was at an Ordination. And while it was all taking place, and I was taking it all in, I felt oddly comfortable, anticipating each next phase of the Rite as if I had been at a rehearsal or involved in preparing the ceremony which I most definitely wasn’t. Puzzled by this feeling of compatibility it finally dawned on me, being at that ordination was just like being at the Easter Vigil in my parish and an adult Baptism. The truth telling map reader was right once again.
In Don’s casket I placed a crucifix that has great meaning for him. It hung over a vesting case in the sacristy when Pius X Seminary opened in Uniondale. He and I were always intrigued and, in a way, mesmerized by it. Don wanted a picture of it on his ordination invitation, and 50 years later on the card to mark his golden jubilee. I think after all these years I finally figured out a bit of its mystery.
The cross is dark. It’s made of solid ebony and the figure is bronze with a dark patina. And yet there is a simple serenity to Christ’s tilted head, his oddly angled wrists, and the gentle “s” curve in his very medieval pose. This captures something about the darkness of Don’s death as well as the serenity and peace of his latter days. As someone who knew the Way and accepted the Truth he always expressed gratitude for his Life. At a meeting initiated by the very compassionate staff at Pius X Residence, Don was presented with the fact that his treatments were no longer helping him, and there was a hospice option open for him to end his life painlessly and in peace among his confreres with the help of his beloved nurses. I know I was holding my breath to see how he would respond to this, as perhaps the others were as well.
Don was way ahead of us. He knew the map and the truth of it, and said, “I have had a great life and have had the opportunity to do so many things most priest don’t get to do, so I have no regrets, and am ready to go.
I am the Life. I am deeply Grateful
Don was always saying how grateful he was for the way things worked out. He had hoped to stay in his beloved East Hampton but was deeply grateful to Chris Heller for taking him in here at St. Louis where he thoroughly enjoyed his second-floor hermitage along with the company of priests and a warm and loving parish. He delighted in retelling how after one of his faints at the altar here, he was immediately surrounded by multiple doctors!
He frequently expressed his gratitude for moving to St. Pius X Residence and clearly stated that he wanted his final days to be there. He was grateful to Bishop Murphy and Bishop Barres for creating such a wonderful facility. He loved the nurses and aids who he told me “pampered him!” He was always telling me and Denis and his niece Deana how grateful he was to be chauffeured by us to doctor appointments, to his rehab stints, and his many stays at Stony Brook Hospital. He was there so often, we thought they might name a suite for him or at least give him a designated parking space.
He told me he felt like a clock that was winding down toward a soft landing. Thanks to the Pius X staff and the Good Shepherd Hospice nurses, that’s exactly how it happened.
And so the mystery of the dark but serene cross is this: gratitude for it all.
In the lobby there is a picture of a window he had made for his room at “Most Holy” as he liked to call his East Hampton parish. His beloved St. Benedict is in the center, surround by four Hamptons scenes marking the hours of the day:
+sunrise over the Eastern horizon of the ocean
+midday over the Village windmill
+Sunset over the Western horizon of the ocean
+and a full moon over the Montauk lighthouse.
And around the whole window is a text from the Psalm 112, in Latin of course:
“A solis ortu, usque ad occasum, laudabile nomen Domini”
“From the rising of the sun to its setting, may the name of the Lord be praised.”
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