No Favors

Wimmer Wedneday. Boniface Wimmer continues in a letter to those who would go on his mission with him.

“To that end you should consider it a privilege to be allowed to take part in a work like this. I will be glad to have good and zealous helpers. But you must not imagine that you are doing me a favor by going with me. The reception into a religious Order is something that must always be sought and asked for, no matter how welcome an applicant may be to a community. For this reason, do not go with me to please me, but on the contrary, consider yourselves fortunate and honored if you are found worthy to take part in such an undertaking. God is able to raise up children of Abraham from stones. He made Paul out of Saul. If my undertaking is from Him, He will send me co-laborers, wherever they may come from. I am sure of this. Therefore I will not persuade or entice you to go and thus render you unhappy if you have no vocation. You will never have cause to cast this up to me. I do not know the future. I show you only the cross. If you take it upon your shoulders, very well. But do not complain afterwards when from time to time you feel its weight. Jesus said to his apostles, “I have told it all to you beforehand,” [Mk 13:23] and “Behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves” [Lk 10:3]. He said it to us also, and I say it to you: If you are frightened when you hear their howling and see their gnashing teeth, then stay at home. If with the grace of God you have not the courage to do and suffer these things for Him, to go wherever obedience requires, to allow yourselves to be used as willing tools, then do not enter the monastery and by no means go with me to America. It is true that in America men are free to profess whatever religion they please. Non-Catholics are more numerous, powerful, and wealthy than are the Catholics. We cannot tell how long they will respect the laws. It is possible that they may persecute us and put us to death. I can vouch for nothing. I am prepared for everything. Whoever wishes to follow me must also be prepared.“

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