TO UTTO LANG Right Reverend Father Abbot, Most Esteemed Confrere: Many thanks for the 2,100 intentions, for which I received yesterday, through the kindness of Mr. Lebling,114 exactly 1,860 marks and 90 pfennigs. Likewise, I send sincere thanks for the information about the printing of the Bible, even though it is Read more…
Wimmer Wednesday. In the German States, conscription is a regular thing every year, and no able-bodied young man is exempt from the draft unless he buys a substitute. However, with regard to students of law, medicine, and particularly of Divinity, exemptions are admitted in this way: These students are enrolled Read more…
Wimmer Wednesday. God has never punished me with an abundance of riches, and I will not complain about poverty since I have already praised it. Nevertheless, I always receive credit as I need it, since I am an honorable soul who always pays his debts eventually. I am always building Read more…
Wimmer Wednesday. We have not had to endure anything of the war itself. There were four brothers drafted into the military. However, the army sent one back as unfit and two left to join our priests in Canada. The fourth was sent back by the War Department after he had Read more…
Wimmer Wednesday. Recently I went to Kansas on a visitation and came near to arriving either injured or dead. Twenty-nine miles from Steubenville all coaches without exception leapt over a 65 foot embankment. The baggage cars went into a thousand pieces. The sleeping coaches were burnt. Our coach, the next Read more…
Wimmer Wednesday. During my absence in Minnesota, and while on visitation to the various priories, troops were levied and four of my lay brothers were drafted into the army though they had already made solemn profession. This forced me to hurry to Washington to see the President and from him Read more…
Wimmer Wednesday. In the holy sacrifice of the Mass, we find real consolation in a life full of trouble and suffering, of crosses and adversity. Let us meet each other there, under the cross. There is little time, though we must always take courage, gather fresh hope, and have confidence Read more…
Wimmer Wednesday. Quietly and undisturbed, we continue what we have begun, intent upon gradually raising our educational institutions to higher levels and bringing them to the standards they should have so that they will not be merely schools for the training of a few people for our Order and for Read more…
Wimmer Wednesday. It is not the building but the people who make up the monastery, who live the monastic life together.—Boniface Wimmer, Letters of An American Abbot, March 30, 1861.
Wimmer Wednesday. The government in Washington very recently permitted us to have our own post office on our monastery grounds so that now our address is simply “St. Vincent, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.” The large Pennsylvania Railroad Company likewise has lately given us, on our monastery property, a freight station on Read more…