At the peaceful monastery tucked amid research and business parks in Northwest San Antonio, a garden of beans, eggplant, tomatoes and corn is tended daily by religious women who spend their days in quiet prayer amid daily chores.
So among those prayers was an appeal for nourishing rainfall.
Then came a late-night deluge that brought with it three inches of rain and damaging runoff at the Monastery of Discalced Carmelite Nuns on Culebra Road.
A storm on May 26 brought a flow of water that raced down a hillside east of the nuns’ property, flattening a chain-link fence and depositing a layer of silt, rocks, asphalt and other debris spanning several yards.
The mess left behind threatened to block St. Joseph Way, the winding, private drive leading to the monastery.
The nuns discovered it the following morning before daily mass, said Sister Corinne Uher, who serves on the council for the monastery owned by the Order of the Discalced Carmelites.
“Father came yesterday morning and he said, ‘Sister, you better do something about the road because it’s very difficult to drive up,’” she said. “It was bad.”
So bad she wasn’t sure how to fix it, and thought first to ask the nearest fire station for help clearing the road. Then came the avalanche of help.
Ray Saenz, a neighbor and frequent volunteer at the monastery, saw the damage and called the neighborhood association.
Dan Rossiter, president of the Thunderbird Hills Neighborhood Association, called the City Council District 6 office and spoke with Orlando Ramirez, a zoning and constituent services representative, who then called the city’s Public Works department.
The group gathered on the roadway in the heat of Wednesday afternoon, Uher arriving in her silver Toyota Corolla with Sister An Dang.
“My priority, my concern, is making sure that the nuns are not saddled with dealing with this mess, given that it’s not a result of anything they did,” Rossiter said. “So how we can come together and figure out a way to make that happen is where I’m at.”
Who are the Carmelites?
The Carmelites have lived and worked at the monastery since it was built nearly a half-century ago, moving from their previous residence near Little Flower Basilica on Culebra Road.
A benefactor, Philip Sheridan, raised the money from parishes in the area, and Philip Barshop, sold them the land.
The Discalced Carmelites are a Roman Catholic religious community of priests, brothers, nuns and laity who live in service to the Church. Carmelites trace their roots and their name to Mount Carmel in the Holy Land, where in the 13th century, a band of European men gathered there to live a simple life of prayer.
The Order of Discalced Carmelites was co-founded by St. Teresa of Ávila, who lived in Spain from 1515 to 1582 and was canonized 40 years after her death. Discalced is Latin for “without shoes,” and reflects the emphasis on austerity and contemplation that the women lead as cloistered religious, meaning they separate themselves from the outside world.
At the heart of the Carmelite charism is prayer and contemplation, but they also spend time working, preparing meals, having celebrations and enjoying their many rescued pets, Uher said. Several times a year, they host Catholic school students to show them what their life is like.
Uher joined the order at age 21 after graduating from high school in Cleveland, Ohio, and traveling with a friend in Mexico for several months.
“I haven’t regretted one day of it,” said Uher, now age 75. “It’s just incredible. Every single day is different. There’s surprises all the time, good ones and not-so-good ones, but you learn to grow in it and live with it and the community.”
The group of 13 women don’t spend all their time kneeling in prayer, she said. They do pray the Divine Office (Liturgy of the Hours), an official prayer of the church, five to six times a day.
“The rest of the day we do a lot [to] support ourselves,” she said, which includes sorting and distributing communion wafers to all churches in the Archdiocese of San Antonio.
Though the order maintains an atmosphere of prayer at all times, it also follows a four-word rule, “necessity has no law” — which directs the nuns to talk less and make very little noise, unless necessary, “like right now,” Uher said.
Who was responsible?
It happens to be her favorite rule of the order, she added, and came in handy when she knew they needed help to clear the road.
Ramirez said Wednesday his office would put pressure on Public Works to clean up the mess as soon as possible, “no excuses.”
Public Works Engineer Ben Marshall, who works in the storm drainage division, looked at the damage and offered the city’s help to clear the road by the end of the week.
The second order of business, the group agreed, was determining who was responsible and why it happened in the first place.
Neighborhood association representatives already had been talking with the council office and Public Works and expressing their concerns about the new housing developments underway.
“We’d actually been …. trying to get clarity on what was going on and how it was potentially going to impact our neighbors,” Rossiter said. City staff had confirmed to the group that the projects were appropriate for the zoning in that area.
‘Be good neighbors’
Between the Carmelite’s roadway and the construction sites on Oak Hill Drive is a thick screen of brush and trees and now a partially toppled chain-link fence.
Though Uher said runoff has previously brought debris into the area, the adjacent lots had only recently been clear-cut, according to Rossiter, perhaps causing the washout.
“All this has completely changed the water flow,” Uher said.
On Wednesday, Public Works staff contacted the San Antonio Water System, which sent an inspector to the construction sites run by a company known as 7 Site Utility and the other by an individual, Julio Zetina.
Zetina had been issued a field correction notice earlier in May, according to emails provided by the neighborhood association. The site was not in compliance with the city ordinance and did not have the required notices. A stop work order was issued on May 22.
7 Site Utility had all the required permits and documentation, but the inspector recommended repairs to an erosion control system.
“We have been in contact with the contractors for the neighboring properties and given them corrective action notices with deadline dates,” stated SAWS spokeswoman Anne Hayden. “It has been very dry for years now, but recent heavy rains are a great example of the importance of erosion controls in place before heavy weather hits.”
Though SAWS could not enforce cleanup of the Carmelite property, the 7 Site Utility contractor agreed to complete the work by Friday, “to be good neighbors,” stated the email.
A crew arrived on Thursday and worked the entire day to clean up the roadway, according to Uher.
Thursday night’s storm brought more rain to the area and pushed more silt onto the road, but no new debris, Rossiter said after a look on Friday morning.
Rossiter jumped into action earlier in the week when he heard about the problem at the monastery close to his home and assured Uher that he would help. “That’s what we’re here to do as a neighborhood association,” he said.
In relentless drought conditions, that kind of help wasn’t the thing the sisters had initially prayed for, but it was answered prayers nonetheless.
Note: This story has been updated to clarify the purchase of land for the monastery.
