True Benedictines

Wimmer Wednesday. You now see, Most Reverend Confreres, that as far as possible we are working hard to be, or certainly to become, true Benedictines. In our monastery, in the missions, in the care of souls, in literary studies, in promoting the liberal arts, in the splendor of the public liturgy, in the education of youth, in the construction of our own buildings by our own hands, in the cultivation of our fields, in the spread of our Order’s fame among heretics, infidels, and Catholics, and even among the barbarians, we serve among the standard bearers of the clerical army, as soldiers without pay, reaping the harvest with our own hands.
—Boniface Wimmer, Letters of An American Abbot, March 16, 1858