With Hearts Full, the Norbertine Jubilee Celebration Comes to a Close

A just-concluded yearlong celebration by Norbertines from California to the Czech Republic marking the religious order’s 900th anniversary may have made the footsteps of the lanky and cantankerous missionary who started it all even clearer, followers say.

That the global jubilee prevailed during a worldwide pandemic made it, in some respects, more powerful, says Norbertine oblate and abbey director of communications Joseph Sandoval of Santa Maria de la Vid Abbey.

“Celebrating 900 years over the last 12 months has reminded me of the Norbertine brothers and sisters I have worldwide and the common goals we seek,” Sandoval says. “Because of the worldwide pandemic, we were not able to celebrate the anniversary in typical Norbertine fashion, but we were all able to find unique ways to celebrate.”

Father Andrew Ciferni of Daylesford Abbey, in Paoli, Pennsylvania, says he thinks the jubilee year has strengthened the connection between Norbertine houses. “We've seen a flourishing of publications about Norbert, Norbertine history and spirituality,” Ciferni says. “We've gotten a broader view of Norbertine ministry in the U.S. houses. We've been able to bring local bishops and others into our houses.”

A time to rejoice
Norbert of Xanten established the first Norbertine monastery, in Prémontré, France, in 1121. The 14-month Jubilee celebrating the 900th anniversary of the order prompted of dozens of events in the United States and Europe.

The anniversary celebration began with a Nov, 21, 2020, conference in Budapest. In the United States, it encompassed a Norbertine Composers Concert, on March 7, 2021, at St. Norbert Abbey, in De Pere, Wisconsin; the Visit of the Newly Installed Archbishop of Philadelphia, at Daylesford Abbey, in Paoli, Pennsylvania; the virtual presence of the Abbot General as Commencement speaker at St. Norbert College; the dedication of the new abbey church for the St. Michael’s Abbey community of Silverado, Calif.; and the premiere of a newly commissioned play on the life of Norbert, “He Walks Through Lightning” at St. Norbert Abbey.

Around the country, Jubilee observances culminated with Daylesford Abbey’s Founders’ Day, on Nov. 14, 2021; with the premiere of a new Christmas song commissioned by St. Norbert College from internationally renowned church composer Paul Mealor; with quieter observances and personal reflection on the Christmas anniversary date itself among many Norbertines and their friends; and – quite possibly the final U.S. event of the 14-month Jubilee in the order’s most westerly time zone – with a closing Jubilee Mass celebrated by archbishop Jose Gomez in Ss. Peter and Paul Church, Wilmington, Calif., followed by a virtual Vespers livestreamed from the Abbey of Strahov in the Czech Republic where the earthly remains of Norbert himself repose.

Just one more chapter in a storied history
Today the Norbertine order numbers more than 1,300 members worldwide, including priests, sisters, brothers, deacons and novices, and Norbertine abbeys, priories and convents are established and active in 23 countries.

“As the youngest Norbertine abbey in the Americas” – Santa Maria is not quite 10 years old as an abbey – “we embrace the challenge and the joy of extending the religious heritage of the order in a whole new and distinctive area of our country upon celebrating our 900th anniversary,” says Abbot Joel P. Garner.

The order ranges well beyond the United States. It’s in North and South America, Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, too – influencing the lives of a multitude of peoples and cultures, says Father James P. Herring of Immaculate Conception Priory, in Middletown, Delaware. In the United States, Norbertine foundations are in De Pere, Wisconsin, and Chicago, Illinois; Paoli, Pennsylvania, and Middletown; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Silverado, Wilmington and Tehachapi in California.

To get this far, Norbertine communities had to navigate the bloodbath of the French Revolution, which fomented hatred toward the Catholic Church and innumerable priests. Religious and lay Catholics both were killed, including St. Pierre-Adrien Toulorge, O.Praem., who spent most of the Revolution in hiding so he could celebrate Holy Mass and the sacraments in secret, sparing the lives of his flock. Toulorge was arrested on Sept. 2, 1793, and sentenced to the guillotine. His dying words: “God, I beg you to forgive my enemies.”

In all, about 90 French abbeys were shuttered during the French Revolution. More were lost in the Thirty Years War, dissolved by Henry VII, and secularized by the Spanish government.

Coming to America
In the United States, the Norbertine order started with a stern-looking immigrant priest named Bernard Pennings teaching students Latin around a kitchen table in Wisconsin. Pennings came to the United States when a Wisconsin bishop wrote to Berne Abbey, in Holland, asking for help with non-English-speaking students; Pennings and two other Walloon-speaking priests arrived at the Diocese of Green Bay in 1893 and began ministering to Belgian immigrants.

Pennings, a frugal man who liked a good cigar, wasn’t the first Norbertine in America; holding that distinction were men such as Father Adalbert Inama of Austria’s Wilten Abbey, a missionary priest who died in 1879, and Father Maximilian Gaertner, also from Austria, who arrived in Wisconsin in 1846 and remained until 1858. But Pennings’ was the only U.S. mission that endured. He established high schools, founded the priory in De Pere that would become St. Norbert Abbey -- the first Norbertine Abbey in the new world – and, in 1925, became the abbey’s first abbot. Pennings also founded Santa Maria de la Vid Abbey, in Albuquerque; and Bayview Abbey, in Middletown. And he established St. Norbert College, the only Norbertine institution of higher education in the world – a move which led, if indirectly, to the founding of Daylesford Abbey.

“He believed in education, not only for the students of St. Norbert College but also for the young Norbertines whom he sent off one-by-one to complete their doctorates – not only in theology but also in other subject areas,” Rosemary Sands, former director of the Center for Norbertine Studies at St. Norbert College, has said.

Looking to the future
Nine-hundred years of the order is a “significant benchmark, a time to celebrate with gusto,” says Prior Emeritus Eugene Gries of Santa María de la Vid Abbey.

That Norbertine life has been around 900 years “means we have been faithful to our charism,” says Fr. Chrysostom Baer, prior of St. Michael’s Abbey in Silverado, California. It means, Abbot Joel Garner says, that “the order has been resilient during the many periods of deep turmoil over the centuries.”

Against the backdrop of the multinational Jubilee, U.S. Norbertines marked the anniversary individually, too, from opening a new abbey building, which is the plan in Albuquerque, to reviewing the life of Norbert, as did Father Brad Vanden Branden, prior of St. Norbert Abbey in De Pere.

“To be part of something that’s 900 years old – there’s something about this way of life that can stand the test of time, especially in a time of hatred and sickness,” Vanden Branden said at the start of the Jubilee.

“It gives us some hope.”

Jan. 26, 2022