From the Abbot
From B avar i a to Kan sa s As I write for this issue of Kansas Monks, I do so from Belmont Abbey in North Carolina, one of our 18 brother monasteries in the American-Cassinese Congregation. The abbots from all the monasteries in our congregation and a delegate from each monastery were present for our General Chapter (congregational meetings) that are held every three years. This was the 52nd General Chapter in the history of our congregation. Our congregation was founded in August of 1855 when there was only one Benedictine monastery in North America – St. Vincent Archabbey in Pennsylvania. St. Benedict’s Abbey would be founded two years later, from St. Vincent, as the third monastery in North America. The American-Cassinese Congregation was founded by Archabbot Boniface Wimmer (above at left) to bring monastic life to North America, but also to minister to German immigrants who were underserved here in their faith – even more so as Fr. Henry Lemke (above second from left) moved west into the wiles of the frontier. Interestingly, at that time in 1855, our congregation was put under the patronage of the Cassinese Congregation in Italy, even though we were founded from the German monastery of St. Michael’s Abbey in Metten, Bavaria. At the time of our founding as a congregation the Bavarian Congregation had only recently been re-founded itself, rising from underneath the wide-ranging suppression of monasteries in Europe by Napoleon around the turn of the 19th century. The Holy See didn’t want a congregation a half a world away to be under the patronage of a congregation still in infancy itself. You might ask, “Why the history lesson?” Because to understand this history in Europe and North America is to understand the charism of our congregation and our monastery, St. Benedict’s Abbey. We came to North America – we have monasteries in Canada, Central America, South America, and most recently in Asia – to serve as missionaries. Specifically, it was the vision of Archabbot Boniface that we not only serve the faithful pastorally but also through education – no other monastic congregation around the world oversees the operation of more colleges, universities, high schools and parochial schools than the American-Cassinese Congregation. Here at St. Benedict’s Abbey we are so grateful that our confreres nearly 160 years ago had this vision that allows us today to serve as “missionaries” at Benedictine College, Maur Hill Mount Academy, our parochial school of St. Benedict Catholic School, our parishes and our Priory in Brazil. Often it is asked of us, “Why are you so active in your work as monks?” We admit that to be a Benedictine missionary is a fine line to walk. But we have this active side because we were asked by the Church to meet the needs of the faithful – then and now. It is interesting that it was the culture and needs of the Church during St. Benedict’s time that led him to found a community of monks to be witnesses to the world in their prayer and work, to be a center of faith and spirituality. Here in the United States, and for us specifically in Kansas, it was again the culture that led German monks to found monasteries of prayer and work to be witnesses and minister to the needs of God’s people. Yet today, it is the culture of the day, the needs of the Church, and our charism that has brought each of us to live as monks of St. Benedict’s Abbey. It is our call to pray for the Church and the world and to work for the salvation of souls. If we reflect on the arrival of those first three monks here in Northeast Kansas in 1857 – Fr. Henry Lemke, Fr. Augustine Wirth (above at center), and Fr. Casimir Seitz (above second from right) – here in the Kansas Territory, when civil war was on the horizon and they found themselves in the middle of Bleeding Kansas, this is the spirit in which we were founded as a community. We were founded in service to God and his Church through our prayer and work – through our witness. It is a missionary zeal that pumps through our veins even today.
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Kansas Monks
