Monastic Life In 1849

“We rise at a quarter to four in the morning and go to bed at nine o’clock in the evening, do not eat any breakfast, have a frugal meal at eleven o’clock, but enough to satisfy our hunger. On Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays we eat meat, the other days, grain dishes; these we also have daily for our evening meal (at six o’clock), except for Sundays and holidays. Priests who travel outside the monastery or engage in mission work keep only the church fasts. During Lent we eat meat only on Sundays. The lay people are also bound by the church rules regarding abstinence, and they keep them conscientiously the whole first and last weeks of Lent and all Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays of the period. Choir prayer is at 4, 6, 9, 12, 3, and half past 6 o’clock.”

—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.