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(From Fr. Paschal Baumstein’s My Lord of Belmont)

In June of 1890, Father Francis Meyer, O.S.B., a young priest of the abbey, contracted typhoid fever. As the disease lingered into its second month, (Abbot Leo) Haid wrote, “I am afraid he will die, [although] we have prayed and still pray for his recovery.” Father Felix (Hintemeyer), who had organized these prayers, appended to the pious petitions the promise that should Father Francis be cured, the monks would build a grotto in honor of the Virgin, whose apparition before (St.) Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes in 1858, had sparked great interest and devotion throughout the Catholic world. Meyer recovered, and Father Felix set the brothers to hauling granite boulders, while he searched for donors to finance the work.

The Grotto of Maria Lourdes was a tasteful, period creation in a cove just northeast and below where the monastery then extended. There was a niche for the statue of the Blessed Mother, an altar of wood, granite, and marble, with brass accessories…The grotto was typical of the Hintemeyer flair. Of itself it was simple, attractive; it exuded peace, piety, and prayer. But Father Felix, as usual, stepped back from the monument he had erected and allowed it to frame the gifts of Leo Haid. At the prior’s suggestion, Abbot Leo agreed to bless the Lourdes Grotto as a Pilgrimage Shrine—the only one in the state. Hintemeyer then planned the festivities, arranged press coverage from as far away as Baltimore, and of course ordained that the highlight of the ceremony would be an address by the Right Reverend Bishop (Haid). 

Interest had been encouraged by Father Felix’s announcement that the grotto was to be, above all else, “The Southern shrine of the Queen of the Clergy for Priestly Vocations”…The bishop pontificated at the High Mass in the Abbey Church at nine o’clock on May seventh (1891). Professor F. Mutter of Richmond composed a special Mass for the occasion, and Father Bernard led the students’ choir and orchestra in performance… 

To this day, students can be seen praying at the Grotto shrine with pious frequency, either individually or together, as in our campus Saints Group. Many visitors also come to the Grotto to pray and to venerate Our Lady. But it is the monastic community that can be found there every May evening, in Mary’s month, entering spiritually into the peaceful sanctity of the place and its miraculous beginnings.

In celebrating Saint Walburga’s Feast Day today, we also celebrate the monastery’s secondary patroness. She is recognized as such by her statue residing in our Lourdes Grotto, the shrine dedicated to our primary patroness, Mary Help of Christians.  The following passage from My Lord of Belmont describes the addition of the statue to the Grotto Shrine:

Later in the month, on Corpus Christi, 28 May [1891], Father Francis blessed another statue for the [Lourdes Grotto] shrine. This one, recently imported from Europe, and positioned in the grotto, near the spring, was of Saint Walburga, the eight century abbess who was the monastery’s secondary patroness” (Baumstein My Lord of Belmont 110). 

Notably, the spring that once flowed at the foot of the statue dried up when a well was sunk nearby. Yet the spiritual spring is ever-flowing for those who pray at the statue for the saint’s intercession. We should also remember the importance of Father Francis Meyer who blessed the statue. It was he who was cured by intercessions to Our Lady, which facilitated the construction of the grotto (see Lourdes Grotto post). 

But the significance of St. Walburga to Maryhelp becomes more apparent in the following passage from an early grotto pamphlet: 

The small shrine shows St. Walburga, an English Benedictine nun, who went to Germany to help her uncle, Saint Boniface, “Apostle of Germany,” and her brothers,–St. Willibald and St. Winibald. She died in 779. Her remains rest at Eichstatt, Bavaria. The staff (crozier) shows she was an Abbess: the book means she is famed for her writings; the vase tells of the oil that even to this day seeps from her tomb, through stone on which her sacred remains lie.

Following her death, St. Walburga’s bones were found to excrete a miraculous clear liquid, called “oil,” that healed countless people of their physical and spiritual ailments. Thus her statue in our grotto was placed near the spring. 

The adoption of Saint Walburga as our secondary patroness acknowledges not only MaryHelp’s German roots, but the missionary spirit with which our monastery was founded, and not least by which the Benedictines came to the United States. She also represents the bridge between the English speaking culture and that of the German, a duality characterizing the early years of MaryHelp and manifested in virtuous measure in the person of our first abbot, Leo Haid. But more importantly, Saint Walburga as our secondary patroness is our guide in our intellectual and spiritual pursuits, interceding for us that we may be healed in both body and mind and lead us into the light of the love of Christ.

So let us pray:

St. Walburga, by your blessed life of love,
God blessed you with the power to heal,
to make whole the soul as well as the body.
Beg for us what we cannot obtain for ourselves,
and heal our world of sickness and sorrow.
May God hear you,
who lived so graciously for His glory,
and send us the healing grace we need,
through your powerful intercession. Amen.