In the woods, close to God, God’s people come calling
Published on Thursday, 17 March 2016 07:00 | 
Written by Peter Finney Jr.
Written by Peter Finney Jr. 
If we learned anything from Katrina, it is that inside every storm, there a thousand stories.
This is just one of them, a small one, a quiet one, in keeping with the person, her mission and her life.
Sister Theresa Berlin lives alone in the Covington woods, inside a 16-by-20-foot cottage – a hermitage, she calls it.
It’s the small, wood-sided cabin loaned to her free of charge 20 years ago by the Knights of Columbus of St. Benedict Parish.
Inside that tiny powerhouse of prayer, Sister Theresa, a consecrated hermit pilgrim, lives a “flexible monastic schedule of prayer and work, solitude and service,” which is just about the most quietly revolutionary thing going.
Her charism is prayer and service. Sister Berlin combines her regular praying of the Divine Office and Mass each day with several hours of simply walking the sometimes-forgotten neighborhoods of Covington and of St. Roch in New Orleans.
“The idea is to reach out in a spirit of prayer and friendship,” Sister Theresa said. “I visit with neighbors on their porches. I also talk to the immigrant workers on the back roads near Folsom. I can’t really speak Spanish, but I speak with love.”
A strange thing happened to Sister Theresa when Katrina approached 10 years ago. Her sister, obviously concerned that she’d be alone and unprotected in that tiny hermitage, asked her to come to her house nearby. It was a sweet offer.
“She ended up with six trees on her place, so I came back to the hermitage with no electricity for a month,” Sister Theresa said. “But I was fine. I even stayed there through Isaac and was fine. It’s always been very secure.”
Then, last week, a temperamental rainstorm decided to rest awhile over Covington, and the hermitage morphed into Noah’s Ark.
“All of sudden I saw the water in the woods in the back turn into a river,” she said. “It was too late to get out in the car.”
In just a few minutes, she had a plan. She consumed the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel next door, grabbed her breviary, her journals, religious articles and a dry, gray habit.
“I hiked through the water – in about knee-deep water – to the highway, about the length of a football field,” Sister Theresa said. “Two lovely ladies I didn’t know, in their 30s, picked me up. When they saw me waving, they took me in. One of them was texting, ‘I’ve got a nun in the car!’ They were so precious. They were trying to evacuate themselves, and they took me to St. Peter Church.”
That’s where Sister Theresa changed into her dry habit and asked a priest to hear her confession. From there, the blessings continued, she said.
She was able to check in on a 93-year-old parishioner she knew was living alone. They both were taken to a hotel, where they could stay dry.
When the water finally receded, volunteers from St. Peter Parish descended on the hermitage and started removing the wet stuff. Hermits don’t really have a lot of stuff.
“Sometimes for myself, even as a hermit, I’ve had way too much clutter,” Sister Theresa said, laughing. “I feel like this is helping me simplify more to the essence of my life and vocation. I know there are many other people who are suffering greatly. I feel for them. My heart and prayers go out to them.”
Two of the volunteers who came to help clean out her hermitage were a married couple from the parish. Recently, their son was burned out of his Memphis, Tennessee, home. He was a musician whose home, as well as his entire music collection, was destroyed.
“What tremendous compassion they have,” Sister Berlin said. “They said they appreciated all the people who had come to help out their son when his home was destroyed, so they wanted to help me. I feel so very blessed.”
Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at pfinney@clarionherald.org .
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