Sister Danny Baron
Sister Danielle Marie Baron, a beloved nun at Rye’s Church of the Resurrection, died of cancer on November 8, 2023. She was 72. Her death was announced at the church’s 9 a.m. Mass the following day.
Sister Danny, as she was known, was a wise, witty, and compassionate pastoral associate at Resurrection for eight years, before becoming the Provincial Superior of her religious order, the Congregation of the Resurrection in Castleton-on-Hudson, near Albany.
At Resurrection, her day began early. If someone needed counseling, she would meet them before work. She took on a range of assignments, guiding the parish’s youngest and oldest members.
Sister Danny was the guiding spirit behind the Parish Religious Education Program. She ran The Parents’ Corner, which gave parishioners an opportunity to discuss challenges of parenting in the Catholic faith in today’s world. Seniors gravitated to the Aging Gracefully program she started.
Sister Danny used to open her Thursday morning Aging Gracefully talks in the church basement with a humorous anecdote before moving on to more practical discussions.
One of her most memorable stories was about Brother Sebastian, a monk who entered an austere religious order of contemplatives that stressed silence. “Only two words were allowed to be spoken during a spiritual review that took place every decade between the superior and the monks. At his first review, Sebastian said: ‘Bed hard.’ A decade later, he said: ‘Food cold.” And at his third review, he said: ‘I quit.’
“At that, his superior said: ‘It’s about time, all you have done is complain since you’ve been here.’”
Danielle Baron grew up in Chicago, where her father ran a family-owned bar. She was the first to tell you that she was something of a wild child growing up and that as a young woman, she had a number of suitors. One of those suitors asked her to marry him. When she turned him down, he asked if there was someone else. “Yes,” she said. “I have fallen in love with Jesus.”
When Sister Danny departed Rye, in the midst of the pandemic in June 2020, she penned a note for the Resurrection bulletin: “Know you will always be a part of my heart and in my daily prayers. May Jesus gift each one of you with the graces that you need.”
Sister Danny’s memory lives on in an impromptu shrine that was placed near the main altar at Resurrection just before the Sunday masses the weekend after her death.
A Mass of Christian Burial was held Nov. 15 at the Congregation of the Resurrection in Castleton-on-Hudson.
— Michael Iachetta
