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View from the Pew
Mary Adamski
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Benedictines in Waialua see prayer as answer to calamity
"No damage, thank God." That was the report from the Benedictine monastery in Waialua, on the mountain slope that was ravaged by fire for several days this week.
The line of flames came close enough to the complex to force evacuation by the 11 monks, nuns and other residents Monday night. Some packed up again Tuesday night, taking their two dogs and caged birds to safety as the hellish fire traveled on, down another gully and up another slope.
Tanker trucks roared up the long narrow driveway tapping into their catchment water supply, embattled firefighters ranged across the hillside, helicopters clattered overhead -- it was not the serene scene familiar to monastery visitors.
Besides the practical steps of carrying away personal possessions and stretching out the hoses, the Catholic order faced the threat with prayer. They no doubt had a lot of company from hundreds of other island residents whose lives and possessions were threatened in the past week with fire, hurricane, earthquakes and a brief worry Wednesday about a tsunami.
And prayer is what the life of a Benedictine is all about. Members of the small Waialua congregation pause from their labors several times each day to pray together. They observe the Liturgy of the Hours, a regimen of early morning, midday, afternoon and evening time set aside to praise God, sing psalms, read, meditate and pray. It is a lifestyle that spread all over the globe after their namesake founder established the monastic model 1,500 years ago.
"We do believe in the power of prayer," said Sister Mary Jo McEnany. "A lot of our friends were joining us in prayer. We prayed for the cessation of winds and for rain.
"We believe God wants us to come to Him with our needs. Jesus said, 'Seek and you shall find, ask and it shall be opened to you,'" said the nun, who is familiar to many island Catholics and other Christians as a speaker and retreat leader.
Yeah, but asking God to put out the fire or twist the hurricane away from shore, that's a whole different thing from hunkering down to a the quiet rhythm of daily adoration, contemplation and chant.
"God is the creator of all nature. He can intervene," said the nun. "That's true in hurricanes and tsunami. Jesus walked on the water" when his apostles were afraid in a storm, she said.
"We are participators in the whole act of creation. Otherwise, do we just give up, say this is nature, beyond our power, and just let fate take over?
"God knows who we are and what we are going through," said McEnany.
"If the eye of the hurricane is a place of peace and quiet, as scientists say, why wouldn't the eye of God be a place of comfort and knowledge and power that would work for our good?"
Next question: What if God and the Honolulu Fire Department hadn't won the battle with flames, or Hurricane Flossie hadn't fainted? How much prayer does it take? What if it fails?
But that is a theological discussion for another time. Because the other thing the Benedictine life is all about is work. Before the questions could even be asked, Sister Mary Jo whisked away like a Waialua hillside zephyr to prepare the weekend program for a parish group, meet her commitment to a caller seeking spiritual counseling, complete the household chores -- and to finish the busyness in time for vespers and compline, otherwise known as prayer.