Fr. John Groner: 50 years of answering Holy Spirit’s distinct calling

The people I’ve been with have been faithful Catholics, having wonderful thoughts and ideas and bringing them to fruition in supporting the work of the Church.”

Father John Groner

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Father John Groner grew up in a family that did everything together and left no one behind.

“We saw that everybody is important, that nobody gets excluded,” said Fr. Groner, pastor of St. Robert Bellarmine Parish in St. Robert and St. Jude Parish in Richland.

His brother, Robert, had muscular dystrophy and needed considerable help getting around.

“I can remember at the stadium, the only stadium in town, three of us would carry him down the steps to the row we were sitting in,” the priest recalled.

That familial ethic of inclusiveness has been tinting and tempering Fr. Groner’s vision of Priesthood for the past 50 years.

“I believe that a priest is a servant of the people,” he said. “I’m here, first and foremost, to offer the Eucharist. The next thing is to give dignity and respect to parishioners. That means listening to their ideas and working with them.”

Fr. Groner has ministered in Columbia; Marcona, Peru; Monroe City and Indian Creek; the diocesan Mission Office; Freeburg; Hannibal; Mexico; and for the past 22 years in St. Robert and Richland.

At each, he has blended the complimentary roles of evangelizer, administrator, sacramental minister, spiritual guide and friend.

“I cannot speak the Word of God to a people until I love them,” he insisted. “Loving God, others and myself is the key to all.”

He observes his priestly anniversary each year on Pentecost, wherever it lands.

“The Holy Spirit is the One Who pulled me and pushed me — or maybe just invited me — into the Priesthood,” he said.

An imperishable crown

Fr. Groner grew up in a family that never missed Sunday Mass and almost always went together.

He spent a few weeks each summer in Freeburg visiting his uncle, Monsignor Bernard Groner, who was pastor of Holy Family Parish.

“We didn’t talk much about the Priesthood,” Fr. Groner recalled. “We just did things together.”

Young John excelled in athletics at Immaculate Conception School and Helias Catholic High School in Jefferson City.

His eighth-grade teacher at I.C. encouraged him and the other 11 boys in his class — she called them the Twelve Apostles — to think about Priesthood.

But young John was interested in other things.

He was the only sophomore in his class to be chosen for the Helias varsity football and track teams, and one of only two sophomores who made the traveling basketball team.

“My whole life was sports,” he said. “Then, everything changed.”

He was walking down the 1200 block of East McCarty Street when the Holy Spirit abruptly convinced him to begin formally discerning the Priesthood.

“I walked straight into Immaculate Conception Church and told the priest, ‘I want to go to the seminary,’” he recalled.

His parents, John and Lydia Groner, were supportive but not excessively enthusiastic.

“I was still young,” he noted. “They knew I still had a lot of time to think about it.”

That fall, he transferred to St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary high school in Hannibal.

“It’s a decision I’ve never regretted,” he said.

He continued on to Conception Seminary in northwestern Missouri for eight years of college and theology studies.

At the end of each year, he had to decide again whether to return.

“I kept thinking, ‘If they don’t kick me out, I’m coming back!’” he said.

His years in formation coincided with the Second Vatican Council and the early years of putting its teaching into practice.

“Those were exciting times, because everything was new,” said Fr. Groner. “Everything was being turned upside-down. In a sense, a whole theology was being rediscovered.”

He and his classmates were being encouraged to help make the Church more collaborative and attuned to the work of the Holy Spirit in the world.

A homiletics teacher at Conception told him to be as concerned about reaching the person behind the pillar in the back of church as with the ones sitting in the front pew.

“That has really stuck with me for all these years,” he said.

A priest forever

Fr. Groner was given a choice of days for his priestly ordination.

“I picked Pentecost!” Fr. Groner said triumphantly.

On the Church’s birthday in 1971, in Immaculate Conception Church in Jefferson City, Bishop Michael F. McAuliffe, now deceased, ordained him to the Holy Priesthood.

“I had the wildest vestment on that you can imagine!” Fr. Groner recalled.

He remembers laying prostrate before the altar.

He also remembers missing his father, who had died the previous year.

“I wished he could have made it,” Fr. Groner said with a pause and a faraway expression.

The new priest’s uncle, Msgr. Groner, had been in the hospital for two months.

“He couldn’t be at my ordination, so the first thing I did was go and tell him I was ordained,” he recalled.

Msgr. Groner died a week later.

“That was the first funeral that I had,” said Fr. Groner. “It was like he was waiting for me to be ordained, and after that, he was ready.”

“Stand with the poor”

Fr. Groner believes that if God hadn’t called him to be priest, he might have become a farmer or a construction worker.

He still enjoys building things up and helping things grow, materially as well as spiritually.

He spent two years as an associate pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes in Columbia before volunteering to serve in the diocese’s missions in Peru.

“It was a big thing that was going on in our diocese, and I wanted to be a part of it,” he said.

He completed an immersion program in Spanish language and Peruvian culture before taking up priestly duties in Marcona, a coastal mining town.

Through Monsignor Ralph Keyes, now deceased, a longtime missionary to Peru from this diocese, Fr. Groner got to know Dominican Father Gustavo Gutiérrez, a fearless advocate for the poor.

“This was a time when the Church in Peru was needing to be more aligned with the poor — standing with their concerns and the need for justice,” said Fr. Groner. “I was educated and formed into that understanding.”

He helped oversee the construction of the sisters’ residence in the pueblo jóven, an enclave of people living in makeshift housing.

He ministered to their souls while trying to help them overcome serious obstacles to earning a decent living.

“My understanding of the missions when I went down there was doing what I could for the poor,” he said. “I eventually realized that mission actually means standing WITH the poor and working with them to remove whatever is keeping them from doing what they are fully capable of doing.”

Fr. Groner became aware that God was ministering to him through his parishioners.

He brought that conviction with him back to Missouri, where he led the diocesan Mission Office for seven years and pastored local parishes.

“The people I’ve been with have been faithful Catholics, having wonderful thoughts and ideas and bringing them to fruition in supporting the work of the Church,” he said.

He helped get Teens Encounter Christ (TEC) established in this diocese and has been active in Cursillo, Residents Encounter Christ (REC) for prison residents, and Marriage Encounter for married couples.

In preaching and teaching, he uses everyday examples to make God’s message understandable.

As a spiritual father, he tries to be a good parent to his parishioners and the people of the larger community.

“You have to teach them,” he said, “and at the same time, you have to let them grow up!”

He has always believed in the presence of the Holy Spirit in the daily life of ordinary believers.

“What I find so exciting is that God enters our history, our time, and continues to complete us, return us to the way we were created,” he said.

A shot in the arm

Midway through is first year of theology at Conception, Fr. Groner didn’t feel like himself.

He had lost a lot of weight and was always thirsty.

His doctor attributed the symptoms to stress.

Then his bloodwork came back. Fr. Groner had Type 1 diabetes.

“I went straight to the hospital,” he said. “They drew up some insulin and gave me the syringe.”

That’s when he started giving himself up to five shots a day.

He has come close to dying several times and must always be aware of sudden drops in his blood sugar.

For years, he was inseparable from his service dog, Lilly. Trained with help from a family in St. Elizabeth, she was alert to subtle differences in his behavior and body chemistry and would warn him.

“She has given me a way to remain an active parish priest, and that has meant everything to me,” he told The Catholic Missourian in 2009.

Lilly died in 2018. Fr. Groner now has an electronic monitor that helps in a similar way.

He believes God has had a reason for helping him avoid an early death.

“Evidently, there’s more work for me to do!” he said.

A new season

Now 76, Fr. Groner will retire on July 1 from being a pastor but not from being a priest.

He’s already scheduling weekends to fill-in for pastors who have to be away from their parishes.

He enjoys spending time with people and hopes friends and former parishioners will keep him on their radar.

He’s convinced that the Holy Spirit is working overtime to move the Church toward its eternal destiny.

“Our world is changing so fast, and the Church has to keep up!” he said. “But first, we have to look and see what that change really is.”

He believes there’s nothing better for someone who’s called to be a priest than to be able to answer that call.

He asked for prayers for the Holy Spirit to continue guiding him — “and to help me live to be 100!”