Wisconsin priest established Hawaii’s Benedictine monastery
By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Benedictine Father Michael Sawyer, the leader of the group that in 1984 founded Hawaii’s only Benedictine monastery, died at Hale O Meleana in Honolulu on Easter morning April 17. He had just turned 97 and had been in religious life 74 years.
He belonged to the Benedictine Monastery of Mary, Spouse of the Holy Spirit, in Waialua.
The present Benedictine prioress, Sister Celeste Cabral, called Father Sawyer “a man of great vision for his community and his life as a priest at our monastery.”
“He was a man’s man and when he spoke, you heard him with authority,” she said. He had a strong commitment to his vocation and durable devotion to the Blessed Mother.
“He would often rise early at 4 a.m. to be alone in prayer, to pray and meditate on the Holy Eucharist,” Sister Cabral said. “He instilled in my religious vocation true faith, hope and trust in Jesus.”
“Father Michael took his last breath and entered into the heavenly court on the most glorious days of days, Easter Sunday morning,” she said. “We will miss his presence in our lives, although we know we now have a prayer warrior interceding for all of us.”
Father Sawyer was born Bertram Gerald Sawyer on April 11, 1925, in Stratford, Wisconsin, to Bert and Bertha Sawyer. The family moved in 1928 to Rhinelander, Wisconsin where he grew up the oldest of two sisters and one brother.
He joined the Army in the spring of 1943 and fought in France and Belgium. He was wounded twice. When World War II ended, he attended the University of Wisconsin on the G.I. Bill to study engineering.
In his second year, during confession at the Newman Club, the priest told him he had to “change his life.”
“He said if I would say three Hail Marys a day and go to Mass and Communion each Sunday for three months, God would work in my life,” Father Sawyer recalled in an interview. “I said I would give it a try.”
“From that time, miracle after miracle led me to the Benedictine Monastery at Benet Lake, Wisconsin, in April 1948. What a shock to my friends and parents who knew me. I praise God for my call, his mercy, and how he has blessed me.”
He professed his vows in 1950, taking the name Michael. As a young brother, he was put in charge of the farm, “milking cows and feeding pigs.”
“When I first joined the Benedictines, I would get up early and run a trap line for muskrat and weasel and sell the pelts,” he said. “Today, I guess, it’s fixing things, like switches, lawn mowers and toilets.”
In 1960, he was sent to El Salvador and then to Costa Rica to help build an agricultural school for boys. In 1965, he returned to Benet Lake and became involved in the Catholic Charismatic movement.
In 1967, he and three other monks sought permission to launch a community in Pecos, New Mexico, that would bring the charismatic experience into the Benedictine way of life. The abbot blessed the idea and sent them south in 1969.
He was ordained in 1974.
File photo of the Benedictine Monastery of Hawaii in Waialua on Oahu’s north shore.
In 1983, the Pecos Monastery, named after Our Lady of Guadalupe, which consisted of both men and women monastics, began looking to start a new foundation. Bishop of Honolulu Joseph A. Ferrario invited them to Hawaii. Father Sawyer arrived in 1983. He was joined the following year by four members of the Pecos motherhouse.
From a temporary residence on Waialae Iki Ridge they began offering parish missions and retreats. Father Sawyer relocated the monastery in 1987 to its present 67-acre site overlooking Waialua.
“The goal of our monastery up on the hill,” he told the Hawaii Catholic Herald, “is to promote God’s peace within ourselves, within everyone we meet and pray for. That’s it simply, God’s authentic peace. This we do through prayer and action.”
“Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” Father Sawyer said. “And, we with our unveiled faces, reflecting like mirrors the brightness of the Lord, all grow brighter and brighter, brighter until we are turned into the very image that we reflect. And, this is the work of the Lord, who is Spirit.”
“The joy of my life in Hawaii has been working with the Basic Christian Community” — a small lay religious group — “experiencing how God’s love changes people’s lives and watching them grow, and growing with them, too, as the people of God. For this I give thanks to the Lord!”
For most of Father Sawyer’s time as a Benedictine, his monastery was under the sponsorship of the Benedictine Congregation of St. Mary of Monte Oliveto based in Italy.
When the congregation in 2012 decided to consolidate its U.S. monasteries and close the Hawaii monastery, the Waialua group decided to leave the Olivetan Congregation and pursue its present canonical status as a Catholic public association of the faithful in the Diocese of Honolulu, under the authority of the local bishop. Father Sawyer was then incardinated into the Diocese of Honolulu.
