Deacon Durr: God has kept me here for a reason

As a teenager, he prayed about the spiritual tug that God might want him to be  a priest. But as he began to grow – he was a multi-sport star at New Orleans Academy under legendary coach Charlie Myers – the thought of marrying and raising a family predominated and pushed aside his boyhood dream.
    

After high school, Durr thought about college, but his father, getting up in age, decided he needed him in his plumbing business.
    

“I had scholarships to play, but my dad was old, and he said, ‘Boy, I need you to come help me,’” Durr recalled. “Back then, you just did it  because we had a family business.”
    

After Durr married and began raising a family with his wife Liz, they were regular parishioners at St. Edward the Confessor Church in Metairie, where one Sunday he heard Deacon David Warriner preach. 
    

Durr went on a mission trip to West Virginia with the parish youth group, and somehow a spark reignited,  and Durr talked to Deacon Warriner about his discerning a vocation to the permanent diaconate.
    

“He mentored me, and so I applied,” Durr said. “There were 145 people who applied, and then it was cut down to 80, and they only took 20. That’s when I truly prayed to God, ‘If this is your will and not mine, I’ll be selected. If not, I totally understand.’ When I opened the envelope, I knew this was going to be a great vocation that God called me to.”
    

For the last nine years, Deacon Durr, who was ordained in 2001, has had a special ministry as a hospice chaplain, daily visiting with those who are waiting for death, some certain, some not, of what lies on the other side.
    

“It’s been awesome,” Deacon Durr said. “I mean, it’s just been a gift. Your family and your wife are the true ministers, because there were many days I’d have to get up from the kitchen table when somebody called and needed me at the hospital when they couldn’t find a priest, or somebody was dying and I went to be with them and the family.”
    

From his Italian mother’s  side of the family, Deacon Durr has always loved talking with hands, using the gift of his physical touch to care for his hospice patients. 
    

That personal style of caregiving led to his contracting   COVID-19 in late March. In the ultimate irony, his vocation as a spiritual sojourner with those near death now placed him in a hospital bed, faced with the reality of actually discovering the answer to the question many of his hospice patients had asked him: “What’s on the other side?”
    

“Getting (the virus) definitely happened in my ministry,” Deacon Durr said. “This was in the early stages, and a couple of people, after I had visited them, tested positive. I wasn’t wearing any gloves. I was touching them, holding hands, blessing them, being with the family.”
    

By the time Deacon Durr was tested for the virus and received the results, things were not looking good.
    

“I was coughing a lot and I had a light temperature, but then I was having a little trouble breathing,” he said. “Then a couple of hospice nurses came over and said, ‘Deacon, you’ve got to go to the hospital.’”
    

The progression of the disease was so ferocious that his infectious disease specialist, Dr. Frank Rabito, quickly determined he needed to go on a ventilator.
    

“He told me, ‘We’re going to have to get your lungs rested, and we’re going to try some different medicines on you,’” Deacon Durr said.
    

Isolated from his wife, children and grandchildren, Deacon Durr confronted death in a way he had only heard about in books about near-death experiences.
    

The night after being intubated, he dreamed he was inside a cave – which was illuminated by some kind of light – and he was there as more than an observer.
    

“There were tons of people there,” he said. “Like (St.) Ignatius, I was off to the side, looking at everybody. All of a sudden, somebody says, ‘Here comes Jesus!’ and when I looked at him, I could see the nail holes in his hands.
    

“And he says, ‘Where’s Eve?’ And she walks up, and he grabs her by the hand, and he turns around and he tells us, ‘Everybody, please follow me!’ I thought I had died. I said, ‘If he’s coming down to get us, I got a shot, because the devil didn’t want me yet.
    

“Then, all I remember is my little nurse, Kristen, waking me up and saying, ‘Deacon, Deacon, you’ve got to get up. You’ve been out of it for a day. You’ve got to start getting up.’”
    

Deacon Durr said he never expected such a vivid spiritual experience, and he is wrestling with how to unpack what it means in his life.
    

“Why he said ‘Eve,’ I don’t really know,” Deacon Durr said. “I could see everybody. I was going to try to knock down Moses and Elijah and everybody else and get in front of them. Lazarus – I was knocking him out of the way, when Jesus said, ‘Follow me!’ Oh, man. The nurses said I had been restless, and they’d come in and pray with me.”
    

Within two days after taking the drug Remdesivir, the infection in his lungs began to clear, and he eventually was weaned off the ventilator.
    

During his 14-day hospitalization, Deacon Durr lost 40 pounds – “I was about 20 pounds overweight, but that’s a heckuva way to lose weight” – and now he is focused on his second chance at life.
    

“Not that I didn’t have a deep appreciation before for the people who are dying, but actually dying yourself gives you a deeper appreciation of – and you see things in a whole different manner,” he said. “You look and you just see how great God is. 
    

“He chose me – he allowed me to stay on this earth. I told Liz, ‘I’m going to dedicate the rest of my ministry to all the front line workers, doctors and nurses and for every one of those 100,000 people that lost their life.’”
    

Deacon Durr was overwhelmed by the prayers of total strangers for his recovery. Cabrini High School, where he serves as chaplain, recited a virtual rosary for his healing. 
    

He has seen miraculous healings before – children and adults who have had cancer but whose condition has disappeared after being blessed with a first-class relic of St. Frances Cabrini. But now, it’s even more personal.
    

“I just give God thanks and praise for whatever reason he left me here for,” Deacon Durr said. “I’m just going to do his work.”
    

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].