Our First Task

“Benedictine life is our first task”, Father Boniface wrote to a theology student, “the next is the education of the youth.”1 The first task is of the very essence of monastic life; the formation of good monastics is the sine qua non. The second task always follows the first, as the history of the Benedictine Order shows. It is sufficient in this regard to point to Father Mabillion’s treaties on monastic education in which he sets forth for the abbot of La Trappe that Benedictine monasteries were not established in order to become academies of [secular] learning, but rather to teach virtue. In fact, learning was to be propagated only to the extent that it served religious perfection.”

—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.