Fr. Victor is Fifty Years a Monk
When Gerald Feser showed up at the door of the Abbey School in 1953, he had a “unprepossessing” appearance. He was a quiet little fellow from a remote farm, so remote that he took the first year of high school by correspondence. He had no classy clothes and also no smart talk. Some of us smiled at his simplicity. But when the first quarter grades were posted, we smiled no more. He got straight A’s all through school.
After joining the Abbey community in 1957, he made his novitiate under Fr. Norbert Winter, just like the rest of us did for three decades. Frater Victor made his simple vows on July 11, 1958, fifty years ago this summer. His higher education started out with philosophy at St. John’s University in Collegeville where he took a B.A. in 1960. He did his seminary work at home, in the little theologate taught by the monks at Richardton.
But he showed such promise as a theologian that he was sent to Munich to study with Michael Schmaus, Karl Rahner and the rest. He did not finish his thesis in Germany, but he came home fluent in German and very well equipped to handle the new theology of Vatican II. He taught briefly in the Abbey Junior College, and when it closed he was able to get away for more education.
Fr. Victor’s first love never was theology, it was mathematics. And so he was able to transfer his attention to the latter field by doing a doctorate at St. Louis University. During his years in St. Louis (1971-75), he lived and worked in an Italian parish which he found very congenial. But of course his attention was mainly focused on the world of numbers.
Upon his return to North Dakota in 1975, Fr. Victor settled in at the University of Mary in Bismarck. For seven years he was both chaplain of Annunciation Monastery and an instructor in the college. But he has labored as a full-time professor of mathematics for the past 26 years. The verb “labored” is the right word choice since Victor devotes himself totally to the students under his tutelage. He is recognized as one of the outstanding pedagogues in the short history of the University of Mary.
In addition to his educational work, Victor is also an ardent conservationist. His contribution to the global problem of pollution and degradation is to pick up all the aluminum cans he can find. This is not just a casual, now-and-then operation with him. It means that he patrols the highways and byways of Bismarck in search of his shiny prey. Sometimes it gets him into places he probably should not be, but what the heck—this is a world crisis!
As one who grew up almost a classmate of Victor, I can say that he is a remarkable monk and human being. His towering intellectual gifts have never made him arrogant, although he does not necessarily suffer fools gladly. He has the unusual ability to live apart from the monastery for long stretches of time, but still remain monastic to the core.
