One Year Later

One year after Boniface Wimmer arrived at the future Saint Vincent, he wrote:

“We now are three priests, three clerics, three scholastics, and one organist (who also is a teacher), which equals ten. Then there are 24 lay brothers. Several of the brothers have more than one trade, such as weaving, binding, tanning, spinning, knitting, etc., and engage in these activities as needed. By the way, everyone has to allow himself to be used for every kind of work, when necessary. This applies even to the students, especially when hay or grain needs to be harvested and when corn needs planted. It makes the dear bread taste better to them when they have had to help earn it by the sweat of their brows. That is what they do in their vacation. Everyone is busy and needs to be busy. The benefit is that we are all healthy and only rarely need outside help for our establishment, only the use of wagons and plows. So much now for our monastery, or rather the people who make up the monastic community, since the monastery building itself must first be built. What has so far been serving as its residences are only three houses, spread fairly far apart.”

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