All Welcomed As Christ

Abbot Wimmer introduced hospitality in his monastery, according to the Rule of St. Benedict, and he took care of even the poorest travelers, the so-called tramps. The abbot of St. Vincent had made it his mission to establish a Benedictine monastery modeled on the monasteries of the Middle Ages. All his other plans, such as the establishment of a seminary for the formation of priests who would take care of German immigrants, etc., were considered to be only incidental to his foundation. It was his ideal to establish a house whose members observed the evangelical counsels of obedience, chastity, and poverty, and did not live from alms, but rather, in keeping with the Rule of St. Benedict (RB 48:8), “When they live by the labor of their hands, as our fathers and the apostles did, then they are really monks.” Moreover, they were to take care not only of their own needs, but also kindly receive and serve as a guest each poor person who comes knocking at the gate of the monastery without regard to his religion or nationality, welcoming him (RB 53:1:) “as Christ, for he himself will say: ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me’ (Matt 25:35).” True to this principle he ordered that at St. Vincent abbey hospitality be extended even to the lowest class of unemployed wanderers, the so-called tramps. Such guests, then, turned up at the monastery daily, and often as many as fifty in number.

Thus his treatment of the tramps Abbot Wimmer considered of utmost importance, because he recognized that it was one of the weaknesses or vulnerable aspects of modern times that poverty was seen as the greatest evil and as such was subject to being generally looked down upon. True to the tradition of his Order he took care of the poor, without seeking to determine if their poverty was their own fault or not, if they were worthy of alms or not.

—Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B.

—From Boniface Wimmer, Abbot of Saint Vincent in Pennsylvania, translated by Dr. Maria Von Mickwitz and Father Warren Murrman, O.S.B., editor.