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A hundred mile journey shaped my life. When I was seven years old and my sisters two and three, my father was killed in an industrial accident. His death not only deprived our family of a father but occasioned our move from Milwaukee to Green Bay, Wisconsin, a journey of one hundred miles. The move made all the difference in my life for it was in Green Bay that I came to know the Norbertine Community.
My first extensive contact with the Norbertines was through their education ministry. They ran three educational institutions in the area: two high schools and a liberal arts college. I attended one of the high schools. For many years I had thought about the priesthood as a possible path in my life.
The mysterious seed of a vocation was planted in me very early and nurtured by an ordinary but faith-filled family. I never spoke of the attraction to the priesthood to anyone until I was a senior in high school when I shared the idea with my mother and indicated that I wanted to enter the Norbertine Community. Her great gift to me was her challenging me every step of the way making sure that this was a path I really wanted to pursue.
As it turned out, it was. As I return to those days in my mind, I am aware that I joined the Norbertines because I saw them as happy men who enjoyed one another and the ministry of education. Quite naturally, I decided that I wanted to be a teacher.
I entered the Norbertine Community after high school and decided that I would stay one year no matter what. It was a good fit. At every step of the formation process I pondered whether it was to this that God was calling me, whether this was what I wanted to do with my life. To both questions I answered yes and I have never regretted my decision. I have been and continue to be a happy priest.
The years since Vatican II, I consider to be among the most exciting and challenging periods in the Church during the last 700 years. As I studied theology during the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, I sensed clearly that I was part of the beginning of a dramatic new period in the Church's life. I am continually grateful that I, in the Norbertine tradition of study, was one of the fortunate ones who were able to pursue graduate studies on the master and doctoral level during those exciting times.
I did become a teacher for a time at Saint Norbert College, but most of my energy there was channeled into campus ministry, and, for fifteen years, I also directed a theological institute. After that, I was the Director of Seminarians for seven years. I also helped found the Norbertine Spirituality Center at St. Norbert Abbey.
In 1985, five of us Norbertines were sent from our abbey in Wisconsin to make a foundation in New Mexico. 'Making a foundation' means that we have come here to root ourselves permanently in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and eventually to become an independent Abbey.
One of my joys for over two decades have been pastor at Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Catholic Community .This has been a dramatic period of community growth and cooperation with hundreds involved in a whole range of ministries. A new parish church was built, and the Family Center and Parish Office were renovated during this period.
Ever since our arrival in New Mexico as the prior, I have been given the responsibility of leading our Norbertine Community. Until 1995 we lived in three houses close to the Holy Rosary Church on the West Mesa of Albuquerque. In August of 1995, we moved to a new location, an environment of silence and retreat, in Albuquerque's South Valley. The property was formerly the Dominican Retreat house and we continue in our own way its tradition of seeking God in the desert through prayer and service.
In September of 1998, we dedicated the Church of Santa Maria de la Vid, the new St. Norbert Cloister in 2007, and the Norbertine Library in 2008. It is in this place of beauty on the southwestern mesa that we hope to become an Abbey and continue in New Mexico the almost 900 year old tradition of Norbertine Religious life.
Click here to learn more about our Norbertine vocation.
Click here to read other biographies of the members of our community. |
