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Belmont Abbey St Patrick Article
The Feast of Saint Patrick, March 17th
One of the most familiar saints immortalized on our painted glass windows in our basilica is that
of Saint Patrick. The window is not only a reminder of the many graces that have poured forth
from the intercessions of the saint over the centuries. It is also a reminder of the Irish heritage
integral to Belmont Abbey’s history, beginning with the Reverend Jeremiah O’Connell, the Irish-
born missionary priest who donated the land for our monastery. O’Connell’s stipulation for the
land was that the Benedictines’ apostolate be in education, and that he live on the premises.
Subsequent years would grace the abbey with the influence of the Irish.
In the early to mid-twentieth century, the Abbey experienced a modest wave of Irish monks and
monks with Irish ancestry coming into the monastery and college. We see the influence of this
wave in this photograph of a Saint Patrick’s Day procession in 1908 and in the other photograph
featured here of Irish political leader and later president of Ireland Eamon De Valera during his
1920 visit to the Abbey.
Saint Patrick’s relevance to our monastery, though, is embodied more profoundly in the Abbey’s
missionary spirit. Born in Roman Britain in 387, Patrick was captured by pirates in his youth and
brought to Ireland as a slave. He eventually escaped and returned to his home. However, later in
life after being ordained a priest he was called to be a missionary to the very land where he was
in captivity years before. He is venerated for his holiness and revered for his tireless efforts on
the Emerald Isle with many miracles attributed to him. Consequently, through God’s grace, he is
credited with converting the island from paganism to Christianity.
Like Saint Patrick, the German, American, and Irish monks who prayed and worked here in the
first few decades of our history harnessed the zealous spirit of missionary work. We see this
most conspicuously in the steadfast service of Belmont’s monk-priests, who established and
served the many parishes throughout the state. Additionally, we see it in the Abbey’s missionary
work in Virginia, Georgia, and Florida, where priories (and later abbeys) and schools were
established.
Belmont Abbey itself is the fruit of German Benedictine missionary efforts, sowed by Archabbot
Boniface Wimmer, who in 1846 immigrated to Pennsylvania from Germany to establish Saint
Vincent’s Archabbey. It was then in 1876 that the first monks from Saint Vincent’s came to
Belmont, establishing a monastery and what was then called Saint Mary’s College.
Threaded into the life and work of Saint Patrick, Belmont’s missionary spirit persists into the 21 st
century, albeit not as overtly as in times past. Rather than parishes and priories, Belmont’s
missionary spirit is manifested in its apostolate, Belmont Abbey College, where students are
prepared to be missionaries in the world by living lives where “in all things God may be
glorified.” Where Saint Benedict teaches us to pray, work, and learn, Saint Patrick teaches us to
use our prayer, work, and knowledge to “make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19).
So let us with Saint Patrick bind to ourselves today
God's Power to guide me,

God's Might to uphold me,
God's Wisdom to teach me,
God's Eye to watch over me,
God's Ear to hear me,
God's Word to give me speech,
God's Hand to guide me

–Br. Bede McKeon, O.S.B.

(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.