Saint Norbert was born at Xanten in the Rhineland to a noble family about the year 1080. The early part of his life was devoted to the world and its pleasures, and when he entered the religious life, he still had the same desire for a luxurious life and pursuits of the nobility. But one day, when he was out riding his horse, a terrifying lightning storm suddenly came upon him. A massive lightning strike nearly hit him, throwing him from his horse. As he awoke, Saint Norbert, speaking the same words as Saint Paul had said when he was thrown from his horse on the road to Damascus, asked, “Lord, what do you want me to do?” A voice in his heart answered him, “Turn from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it.” He immediately reformed his life, devoting himself to prayer and penance. Giving everything he owned to the poor, he went to the pope for permission to preach. In an extreme response to his old ways, he now chose the most difficult ways to travel — walking barefoot in the middle of winter through snow and ice.
For the next several years he roamed throughout western Germany, Belgium and France, preaching repentance, peace and moral reform. The darker side of feudalism gave him much to preach about. The absence of an effective police force or national militia allowed for continuous brutality, brawls and feuds. The ordinary citizen faced the unpredictable violence of armed knights. Those Iron Men, clad in their suits of armor, often plundered whatever they wished, with little resistance from the vast majority of helpless people. In settlement after settlement, he would find cases of armed combat and hatred. In addition, he encountered a demoralized clergy, lonely and feeling that the official church cared little about them. He had plenty of work to do when hearing out the complaints of the serfs, who were little more than slaves caught in a hopeless situation of bondage.
Ultimately, a bishop granted him land in the valley of Premontre, where Saint Norbert, started a community with thirteen others, that became known as the Praemonstratensians (after the valley) or more commonly, the Norbertines. They began wearing white habits, the same that Norbertines wear today, to imitate the choirs of angels in heaven in their most important duty: to sing the praise of God on earth. Even though Norbert was a man of deep prayer and spirituality, he was a person aggressively interested in the needs of the people.
He defended the truth of the Eucharist when a heresy arose in Belgium in the early 12th century. The town of Antwerp was persuaded by the would-be reformer Tanchelm that the sacraments were not real, a belief that persisted after his death. By his preaching, St. Norbert converted the whole town back to faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
Later, this truth would again be denied in the Protestant Reformation. This is part of the reason that St. Norbert was only canonized in 1582, so long after he died in 1134. He was held up as a model of faith to the wider Church, an “Apostle of the Eucharist.” St. Norbert’s connection to the Eucharist goes beyond his preaching against Tanchelm. When he was a traveling preacher at the beginning of his career, he carried with him hardly any possessions outside of what was needed to celebrate Mass. Sometimes he would celebrate more than one Mass in a day, and several of his miracles were accomplished in connection with the Mass. He was so devoted to the Precious Blood that when a poisonous spider fell in the chalice, he drank it rather than risk spilling any. The saint thought he would die, but a little later the spider came harmlessly out of his nose. He also healed a blind woman by breathing on her after consuming the Eucharist and drove out a recalcitrant demon from a young girl by having her present as he celebrated Mass.
Norbert attempted to reproduce the lifestyle of the apostolic community of the early church. In his theological outlook, he saw the Holy Spirit as the originating power of the group. Common prayer and celebration of the Eucharist was to be the sustaining dynamic of the community. Selfless sharing and reaching out with love was the moral power that should surge from the members. He dreamed of the emergence of a primary community whose members had the capacity to live together with a shared value system and shared beliefs. The first sentence of their rule said, “Be of one mind and heart in God.” Thus they were to have the ability to model and generate other communities based on divine love and human sharing. By emphasizing the primacy of communal love in Premonstratensian existence, Norbert sparked all over Europe the possibilities for parish and other ministerial clergy to live in a soul-satisfying community context. This is a goal still being sought for today.
“Who Is Norbert of Xanten?” St. Norbert College. 14 December 2023. https://www.snc.edu/cns/norbertofxanten/
Br. Norbert Keliher, O.P. “St. Norbert, Apostle of the Eucharist”. Dominicana. 6 June 2017. https://www.dominicanajournal.org/st-norbert-apostle-of-the-eucharist/.
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