Fr. Godfrey Diekmann, OSB (1908-2002)
Remembrances
by Dr. Mary Schaefer
Canadian Liturgist
While I knew Godfrey, I wasn't close enough in recent years/decades to write
a remembrance that has the kind of vividness you need. I had reason to personally
be grateful that Godfrey acted as unofficial guestmaster when people from way
away arrived at the doors of the Abbey. I had been working as a lay missionary
in the Peace River country of northern Alberta for one year in the early seventies
and arrived at St. John's for summer school in liturgy in a state of culture
shock. I drove in so late at night in my ancient VW that I had to unroll my sleeping
bag on the threshold of one of the side doors to the Marcel Breuer church. There
was a central Minnesota thunderstorm that night, and the threshold was very narrow.
Even in such circumstances as to produce a totally bedraggled pilgrim (or vagrant?)
by morning, Godfrey was not at a loss.
Of course there were the wild mushroom hunts, with the invitation to join him
in a mushroom stew afterwards. The lucky soul joined in grace over the steaming
plate with more than usual sincerity, since s/he was entirely dependent on the
prudential (and heavenly guided) judgment of Godfrey the mushroom hunter.
And there was the generous invitation, on the part of some members of his family,
after an ICEL Mass with the pope in June 1996, to join them and him, now hobbling
with a cane in his eighties, in a memorable jaunt along the dim alleyways of
the necropolis under St. Peter's. Of course the high point was reached at the
putative tomb of Peter. (I had first heard the story of those scavi and that
memoria from Richard Krautheimer, the great Jewish-German archeologist, who in
a stage whisper in the ballroom of the Institute of Fine Arts in New York City
told his students of the bones of a large man. . . . Krautheimer was even then
publishing the definitive research on the early Christian churches of Rome. And
then to visit those grottoes with another giant, whose life was devoted to reclaiming
the insights of the earliest church so that we the Church might pray better.
. .. Graces of my life. Fitting that Krautheimer should die in Rome at an advanced
age, and Godfrey, 93 years young, on the feast of Peter's Chair. You might ask
John Page for a memoir.
A joy-filled Lent, Dr. Mary Schaefer
also a member of the North American Academy of Liturgy