In memoriam

Abbot Owen John Purcell, osb

25 July 1931 – 8 November 2013

Born in Leavenworth, Kansas, John attended school at the old cathedral. Brother Owen professed vows as a monk of St. Benedict's Abbey, Atchison, Kansas on 11 July 1952 and was ordained a presbyter on 30 May 1957. He earned a master’s degree in Latin and spent over a decade serving at Maur Hill High School, where Father Owen experienced another spiritual awakening, prompted by an awareness of his vulnerability.

In turning his will and life over to the care of God as he understood him, he found that like pealing an onion away by layers, wisdom strips away masks, pretences, postures until we come to honesty in our inner self, where God incarnate is present, loving, saving. There, he said, “around the essence, around the still point: God equals love equals now. In this present moment, around and round we go, and it never stops: ‘Mercy within mercy within mercy’”, quoting Thomas Merton.[1] This awakening coincided with the reform following the Second Vatican Council and his chaplaincy at Mount St Scholastica, Atchison, where he came alive yet again, forming enduring friendships.

He was elected seventh Abbot of St. Benedict's Abbey on 28 December 1989, serving until his resignation in the Spring of 1994 due to the burden of office. Owen was a spiritual father by his title Abbot, but he preferred to accompany people and so to help them discover themselves, to walk with people as each comes to honesty with oneself. He would say, “wisdom cuts through the marrow and fat of our own self-delusion; wisdom renders us naked and so open to the God of love”.

Salvation consists in sharing even during this life in the personal way of living proper to the Trinity: respecting the difference of persons in loving union. Abbot Owen came to live in this way, respecting others while forming mutual bonds of love and so discovered the truth of the words Samuel Langhorne Clements (Mark Twain) used to end his book, Eve’s Diary, standing at the grave of his wife, saying: “Wherever she was, there was Eden”.

Daniel P. McCarthy

Footnote

[1] T. Merton, The Sign of Jonas, Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York 1953, 362.

 

Bibliographical entry in full

McCarthy, Daniel Patrick, "In memoriam: Abbot Owen John Purcell, osb, 25 July 1931 – 8 November 2013", in Born of the Spirit: Generative Communities. Genitae Spiritu communitates generant, ed. D.P. McCarthy – J.G. Leachman (Documenta rerum ecclesiasticarum instaurata, Liturgiam aestimare = Appreciating the Liturgy, Conversationes Atchisonenses: colles bini – gemini sancti : Atchison conversations: twin hills – holy twins 1), St Michael's Abbey Press, Farnborough (Hampshire) 2025, x, https://generativecommunities.org/owen-memoriam/ [ accessed 11 October 2026].