3 minute read
A Place of Springs
Monks return to where seeds of community were planted; sesquicentennial ends with intimate, outdoor Mass
The ruts in the roads still held water from the previous day’s rain as a small caravan of monks from St. Benedict’s Abbey drove the gravel road from Atchison through the Missouri River floodplain to Doniphan April 26.
Abbot Barnabas Senecal carried with him a brief homily and the text of Psalm 84:
Happy are those who trust in you Lord God of Hosts, As they go through the Bitter
Valley, They make it a place of springs, The autumn rain covers it with blessings, They will see the God of gods in
Zion.
The monks arrived at Doniphan, a quiet gathering of homes and abandoned buildings that once was a roaring river town until the river slithered away in the night. Climbing a hill and following a path through a stand of evergreens, the monks found a clearing distinguished by a monument of mortared stone.
Inscribed on the monument were the words: “St. John the Baptist Church, July 1856, Founded By Henry Lemcke (sic), O.S.B., Origin of St. Benedict’s Abbey U.I.O.G.D.”
There the monks erected a crude altar constructed from four hand-hewn fence posts and three old boards. Built by Abbey handyman Jim Carter and Brother Anthony Vorwerk, it was a replica of an altar built by Father Casimir Seitz, the youngest of the three founding monks of St. Benedict’s Abbey. A homesick Father Casimir, the first man ordained to the priesthood in the Kansas Territory, celebrated his first Mass on that makeshift altar a few days after he and his companions, Father Peter Henry Lemke and Father Augustine Wirth had arrived from Leavenworth. Following the Mass, Father Casimir treated himself to a breakfast of bacon and black coffee and decided that he felt better than at any time since his arrival in Kansas.
On that same spot, where monastic life in Kansas had begun, the monks of St. Benedict’s Abbey concluded their year-long sesquicentennial celebration in a simple outdoor Mass.
“Psalm 84 evokes some of the real sentiments of the earliest Kansas monks,” Abbot Barnabas said in his homily. “There was bitterness with shortages of money and manpower, with frustrations that the abbot of St. Vincent showed favor to the Minnesota foundation and not to Kansas, with longing for the homeland. But, the monks adjusted, made it a place of springs. Soon blessings came. They walked miles, ever growing in strength.”
A week before their outdoor Mass, Abbot Barnabas and the monks had hosted a grand sesquicentennial celebration, a last hurrah! Representatives of the many student organizations on the Benedictine College campus had marched in procession into the Abbey Church to reverberant surges of organ music. Pews were packed to capacity.
But a year of celebrations ended in the same manner as Father Casmir’s first mass, with a spring breeze, birdsong and an open Kansas sky.
Recalling the result of the first two weeks of labor in Doniphan, Father Augustine wrote: “The creditors were satisfied, and the constables kept off our necks. The windows were fitted with glass, the church received a floor, bedsteads and a table arrived from St. Joseph, the sacks we had brought along were filled with prairie grass and shavings. With six bricks we built a fireplace for cooking, praised God’s providence for his children, gave a toast to monastic poverty, and hoped for better times.”
In this spirit, Abbot Barnabas said, Augustine, 29, and
