Jenkins, Father Oliver Lawrence

1869, July 11

Date of Birth:  1813, June 17

Issy
July 27, 1869

Father and Very Dear Confreres,

The Seminary of St. Charles has lately suffered a loss which will be keenly felt. Father Oliver Lawrence Jenkins died from a serious illness on July 11, 1869, at one o’clock in the morning. The danger was recognized almost too late; nevertheless, there was time to give him all the sacraments while he was still conscious. He received them with the piety which he had exhibited all through his life.

His patience while undergoing severe pain was unvarying: not a word, not a sign, of complaint. As he was in health, so he showed himself in sickness: simple, kind, lover of the cross. As one of his confreres said, a man whose actions were heroic.

Father Jenkins was born on June 17, 1813, at Baltimore of parents of the most respectable class in that city.

When he had finished his studies, he spent some time in secular society engaged in commercial enterprises in which he was very highly successful. However, returning from a voyage he made to Europe as a companion to his brother, he resolved to offer himself for the service of the Church.

With that in mind he entered the seminary on January 2, 1841, and on December 21, 1844 he was ordained to the priesthood. He had conducted himself in the seminary in such a way as to be judged fit for admission to the Society without further testing. It was in 1846 that he was formally admitted. He was assigned to St. Mary’s College as a teacher. In 1848 he was transferred, as Superior, to the minor seminary of St. Charles, which opened at that time. He stayed there only until 1850 and was then named President of the same St. Mary’s College where he had been a teacher. But when that college was closed, Father Jenkins returned again to St. Charles as President.

In every way Father Jenkins showed himself constantly as a man of God, seeking only His glory and thus ready for every sacrifice. A model seminarian during his years of theological study, he was a model priest, a model director, in carrying out his duties. He was especially admired for his humility, simplicity, zeal, obedience, charity and patience equal to every trial. Readily acknowledgeable was his generosity, his love for the Society, his devotion to the work to which he was assigned – this apart from his acts of charity, known only to God and those who were their beneficiaries. He was largely responsible for construction work at St. Charles, for the entire chapel. “He lived only for the work of the seminary,” said one who knew him well.