During an age of pandemic anxiety and election-year angst, Sister Bernadette Meno continues to accept prayer requests and relay the message that God remains with us always
Diocesan hermit Sister Bernadette Meno in St. Joseph Church, Makawao, Maui. (Courtesy photo)
By Anna Weaver
Hawaii Catholic Herald
While the world shutdown in spring 2020, people isolating in their homes, limiting the time they spent out and about, and attending church at home, Sister Bernadette Meno didn’t have as much to change about her routine.
That’s because she has been a diocesan hermit since 2012, officially sanctioned by the Diocese of Honolulu’s Bishop Larry Silva to live a consecrated life dedicated to prayer and more removed from the world.
The 71-year-old Maui resident already limited her time spent online, on social media and watching the news. So she found it easier to avoid the anxiety-inducing news rolling out as the coronavirus pandemic swept the world. But Sister Bernadette was well-aware of the pandemic’s effect locally as she helped her parish prepare for church shutdowns, assisted priests at daily Mass during the shutdown, and volunteered during the reopening of Mass.
What connected her even more to the world’s worries were people’s prayer requests, a large part of her daily vocation.
“I hold these people in my heart,” Sister Bernadette said. “I have to ask the Lord for the grace to share their pain and suffering.”
She wants people to know that no matter how bad things look in the world, “Christ is with us.”
“He’s promised he’d be with us. We have to have that hope no matter how bad things look.”
That isn’t to say she hasn’t been stressed by 2020’s ups and down. “I can fall into the anxiety too,” Sister Bernadette said. “I had to cut off a lot of the social media and the news … I go more into prayer instead.”
Hermitage
While a common image of a hermit is a lone man living in a desert cave, Sister Bernadette points out that in the early Catholic Church, it was quite common for widows or widowers to dedicate the rest of their lives to the church after the death of their spouses.
Sister Bernadette lives in a small cottage on a property in rural Haiku, Maui. She recently redid her home interior layout to change her bedroom into an oratory. The prayer space has a chair, a table, and the Blessed Sacrament in a tabernacle that once belonged to the Maryknoll Sisters at St. Anthony Parish in Wailuku. Bishop Silva has given her permission to have both the tabernacle and consecrated host without needing to have Mass celebrated there once or twice a month, as is normally the requirement whenever the Blessed Sacrament is enshrined somewhere.
Curtains divide her living room into sleeping quarters on one end and kitchen and dining space at the other end.
“When I’m in my hermitage, this is basically my monastery or cloister,” she said.
Her Catholic landlord rents to her at a low rate so she can afford her cottage on her limited income of a small widow’s benefit, social security income, and donations from supporters. She pays for health insurance, utilities, internet, phone, groceries and other small expenses, but has vowed to live a life of poverty.
Family life
For most of her life, Sister Bernadette has not lived alone.
She was born Bernadette Campana in Chicago and attended Catholic schools throughout childhood. She was a postulant for the Daughters of Charity in St. Louis, Missouri, at age 21 but decided religious order life was not right for her.
She met her Guamanian husband, Jose Meno, while serving as a volunteer on the small island of Tinian in the Mariana Islands. Together they had four children and moved to Maui in 1977.
Over the years Meno worked as outreach coordinator for the Kula Catholic Community and St. Joseph Parish in Makawao, Maui, as a case manager for senior citizens and the needy with Maui Economic Opportunity, for Maui Meals on Wheels, at a doctor’s office, as an infant care teacher, as an airport visitor information staffer, and as a part-time janitor with her husband at the Catholic school their children attended to help cover the cost of tuition. She also stayed home for a decade while her kids were small.
Her husband’s health declined over more than a decade before he died from early-onset Alzheimer’s. At one point the couple moved to the mainland to get better care for him. After he died in 2008, Bernadette eventually moved back to Maui to be closer to most of her family.
Two of Sister Bernadette’s children live on Maui, one on Oahu and one on the Mainland and she now has six grandchildren.
After her husband’s passing, Meno began looking into forming a religious community with a friend. However, that friend died, and Bishop Silva suggested she look into being a diocesan hermit instead.
At that point, Meno had already gone through formation and profession as a secular Carmelite and then formation and profession as a secular Franciscan. Her in-depth spiritual formation and practices fit well with the diocesan hermit role.
Life as a hermit
Bishop Silva consecrated her as a diocesan hermit during a Mass at St. Anthony Church in Wailuku, Maui, on Sept. 2, 2012. She is the only diocesan hermit in the Diocese of Honolulu.
“Sister Bernadette Meno’s vocation as a diocesan hermit is one she carefully discerned after living for many years in her vocation as wife and mother,” Bishop Silva wrote in an email to the Herald. “When her husband died, she discerned that she wanted to dedicate her life to prayer, especially intercessory prayer for those who seek her prayers. She does continue to be a mother and grandmother, but her primary vocation now is one of contemplation and intercessory prayer.”
Teresa Chu worked with Meno at Our Lady Queen of Angels Parish in Kula, Maui, in the early 1990s, and later went through formation as a secular Carmelite with her. The two usually meet once a month for spiritual sharing and lunch.
She was surprised when Sister Bernadette decided to become a diocesan hermit, but said the role suits her.
“Sister Bernadette has always placed great importance on the development of her spirituality, and her faith has brought her through raising a family, the loss of her spouse and now devoting her life more fully to a ‘Life of Prayer,’” Chu wrote in an email.
Sister Bernadette didn’t consider entering a religious order again because she says she’s more of a solitary person.
Father Michael Tolentino, Sister Bernadette’s pastor at St. Joseph, Makawao, said he knows her to be “a person who really values the importance of having a healthy spirituality,” regularly meeting with her spiritual director, seeking the sacrament of reconciliation, attending daily Mass, holy hours and adoration, while daily following the Liturgy of the Hours.
“She was always ready to give her time of service in the church especially preparing the church for our daily Masses,” the priest said in an email. “This time of pandemic, she volunteered herself [to help] during weekday Masses.”
“I can see in her that prayer and work is her way of living,” Father Tolentino added.
Sister Bernadette’s way of life is rooted in the rules of consecrated life, specifically Canon Law 603, relating to the eremitic or anchoritic life “by which the Christian faithful devote their life to the praise of God and the salvation of the world through a stricter withdrawal from the world, the silence of solitude, and assiduous prayer and penance.”
According to the canon, a hermit dedicates his or her life to God publicly through a diocesan bishop, pledging the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience to the bishop. Sister Bernadette directly reports to Bishop Silva. Pre-pandemic they met in person once a year; this year the pandemic prevented that and Sister Bernadette sent a written report instead. The bishop approves of her living quarters as well as other components of her life.
As a diocesan hermit, she lives simply, keeps limits on her contact with the outside world, and dedicates her life to intercessory prayer. She is not however cloistered and does go into the community, pointing out that as someone who follows Franciscan spirituality, she can leave her hermitage. St. Francis encouraged those that followed his rule to “be out in the marketplace.”
Her daily life consists mostly of following set times for prayer through the monastic Liturgy of the Hours, answering written and online correspondence, attending daily Mass and helping as needed at St. Joseph, and doing work around her house — cleaning, outside yardwork and the like.
“My main vocation is prayer, intercessory prayer for people, contemplative and meditative prayer,” Sister Bernadette said. “Part of it is steeping myself in the Lord so when [people] write to me, that closeness to God helps in my reply to them.”
Harder than living by herself is not being able to see her children and grandchildren as often as normal grandparents might. Although she has family on Maui, Sister Bernadette must discern whether a visit is a want or a need. Her youngest grandchild is now 9 so her grandchildren don’t “need” her as much. Visits are mostly for holidays and special occasions like birthdays.
Sister Bernadette Meno’s hermitage cottage, in the back, in Haiku, Maui. (Courtesy photo)
Praying for others
Sister Bernadette wears a Franciscan brown habit with a veil, crucifix, scapular and Franciscan waist cord. She’s hard to miss when she goes out, and people often stop to talk. They want to know who she is and what she does. While she happily answers those types of questions, Sister Bernadette especially loves it when someone wants to talk to her about Jesus.
If people ask her to pray for them, she pulls out her notebook and writes down their intentions. She also shares her email address with those that want to contact her later.
It’s by email that anyone can send prayer intentions to Sister Bernadette. And you can expect a response beyond “I received your request.”
Her family background makes her more accessible.
“They really like that I was married, that I raised children, because I can relate to them,” Sister Bernadette said. “I understand what it’s like to have a grandkid, I understand what it’s like to work and raise kids. … People who are widowed and who were a caregiver … I was my husband’s caregiver for 13 years.”
“Her vocation as wife and mother has made her very aware of the joys and challenges of marriage and family life, so she is in a unique position to pray for married couples and families,” Bishop Silva said. “God calls everyone in a special way, and now he has called her through this special consecration as a hermit who quietly connects all of us to God and his merciful love.”
Some people regularly communicate with Sister Bernadette and some she never hears from again. She receives emails from around the world, usually from people who hear about her through Hawaii Catholic Herald stories and notices, and other online references. People from Slovakia, India, New Zealand and South America.
“It’s the same story all over,” Sister Bernadette said of what she hears from those who contact her. “People are hurting, people are looking at, where is God?”
Sister Bernadette particularly likes the analogy found in a poem by Edith Wharton: “There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
“We’re all called to be the mirror that reflects the light, which is Jesus,” Sister Bernadette said.
“A hermit’s role is to help people focus on the light,” she said.
To reach Sister Bernadette Meno, diocesan hermit, with your prayer requests or questions email her at hawaiicatholichermit@aol.com.
