Father Joel Garner, O. Praem.

Life-altering journeys chart the course

Father Joel Garner was seven years old when his father was killed in an industrial accident. Not only was the boy and his two younger sisters, ages two and three, deprived of their father, the tragic event also uprooted the family who moved from Milwaukee to Green Bay, WI. That one hundred mile journey, however, shaped Father Joel's life, "for it was in Green Bay that I came to know the Norbertine community."

His first contact with the Order was through its ministry in education. In Green Bay and De Pere, the Norbertines' ran two high schools and St. Norbert College. Father Joel attended Premontre.

"For many years, I had thought about the priesthood as a possible path in my life. The mysterious seed was planted in me very early and nurtured by an ordinary but faith-filled family."  He never spoke of his attraction to the priesthood to anyone until he was a senior in high school. Sharing the idea with his mother, Father Joel specified that he wanted to be a Norbertine.

"Her great gift to me was challenging me at every step of the way, making sure that this was a path I really wanted to pursue. As it turned out, it was."

The Norbertines as "happy men who enjoyed one another" and the Order's ministry of education attracted Father Joel. He, of course, would be a teacher, too.

He entered the Community after high school. Throughout the formation process, he pondered whether it was to this that God was calling him, whether this was what he wanted to do with his life.

"To both questions, I answered ‘yes' and I have never regretted my decision, I have been and continue to be a happy priest."

Father Joel graduated from Premontre in 1958 and enrolled at St. Norbert College, graduating cum laude four years later. He was ordained in 1965, then attended Marquette University for a graduate degree in theology. Later, he studied at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary in New York, earning the doctorate in religion and education in 1972.

Father Joel considers the times since Vatican II to be among the most exciting and challenging periods in the Church during the last 700 years. "As I studied theology during 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."

Father Joel's journey included a long and productive affiliation with St. Norbert College for which he received the College's 1989 Alma Mater Award. There is a family story in which Father Joel came to the St. Norbert campus for the first time with his parents at about age three or four during a visit to a maternal uncle, then a Norbertine seminarian.

"Our visit took place on the grass in front of Main Hall. Bored with the adult conversation, I negotiated the steps in front of Main Hall and unsuccessfully attempted to open the front door. My father was to have commented wryly, ‘Unfortunately, this is probably as close as he will ever get to college.' If I were to go to college, which was certainly his dream, he never would have guessed I would go to St. Norbert."

Nor would he have guessed the extent of Father Joel's contributions there. According to pre-ordination expectations, he did teach - religious studies - at St. Norbert College, joining the faculty in 1967. His teaching career, however, was short-lived. Within a year, he was appointed director of Campus Ministry and pastor of the Church at St. Norbert College. As campus chaplain, Father Joel was part of a team that sought and obtained recognition for the campus parish as an official parish of the diocese (1969), "the first Catholic college in the country to be so designated." For fifteen years, he also directed St. Norbert's nationally-known Theological Institute, a continuing education program of pastoral education and spiritual renewal. He was elected a member of the Board of Trustees in 1980.

Father Joel stepped down from his campus positions in 1978 to work with the formation of Norbertine seminarians, a ministry he served for the next seven years. At the same time, he also helped found and directed the Abbey's Ministry and Life Retreat Center, an ecumenical center for spiritual renewal that today is the Norbertine Center for Spirituality.

Other leadership ministries included four years on the Executive Board for the Wisconsin Catholic Campus Ministry Association; six years on the Abbot's Council; and coordinator of programming in the Ministry to Priests Program for the Green Bay Diocese.

A sabbatical year of study and travel in 1983-84 afforded a concrete sense of the Church's universality which he experienced on a deeply emotional level. He came back from an itinerary that included Rome, Athens, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, several cities in Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and India with a new appreciation for "catholic" as professed in the creed. In a contemplative center in Bombay, for example, he worshiped in the tradition of the Hindus, offering the Eucharist seated on a pillow and wearing a prayer shawl instead of the vestments of the Western Church. It was especially thrilling to see men of his own Norbertine tradition working in India and in Australia, and Hungarian refugee priests re-establishing their Abbey in California.

Barely a year later (1985), Father Joel embarked on another life- altering journey when he and four other Norbertines left the De Pere Abbey to begin a new 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."

Soon after arriving, the Norbertine enclave dedicated their priory to Santa Maria de la Vid (Our Lady of the Vine), the name of the first Norbertine Abbey in Spain in the early 12th century. Named prior of the new foundation at that time, Father Joel continues to act in that capacity.

At the same time, he counts among his special joys being pastor at Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Catholic Community for the past seventeen years.

"This has been a dramatic period of community growth and cooperation. One of the fruits of that growth is the new parish church, dedicated in 1993."

The Norbertines are deeply involved in the ministry of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. Their activities include working with recent immigrants, ecumenical education, supporting local parishes, grass roots community organizing, and pastoral care in hospitals.

Until 1995, the members lived in three houses close to Holy Rosary Church on Albuquerque's West Mesa. Three separate living quarters, however were not conducive to fostering community. And despite the increasing demands of ministry, "there remained one abiding and essential theme to our life - an overall commitment to developing an environment where community would be central to our lives. Living in separate houses did not contribute to our vision of community."

Accordingly, the Norbertines of New Mexico bought and moved into a former Dominican Retreat House, "an environment of silence and retreat," in Albuquerque's South Valley.

"We continue in our own way its (Dominican) tradition of seeking God in the desert through prayer and service."

In September 1998, the Community dedicated the Church of Santa Maria de la Vid and a Center for Spiritual Life. These completed Phase I of a three-phase, long-range development program.

"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....By doing this, we will lay a solid foundation for a ministry that will serve the local Church for centuries to come."

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