When a powerful thunderstorm’s winds ripped through the woods of a Minnesota retreat center called Pacem in Terris one evening last month, a retreatant named Samantha huddled alone in her secluded hermitage, feeling so scared she “couldn’t think straight,” she wrote later. 

During the Aug. 26 storm, trees were falling all around the 12-by-16-foot cabin equipped for private retreats, said the Minneapolis resident who requested that her last name not be disclosed. “The floor shook as trees fell,” she said. “It sounded like boulders were ramming into the walls of the hermitage.”

When rain began blowing sideways, she rushed to close the hermitage’s windows. Forgetting the emergency instructions she’d been studying minutes before, she begged for the Lord’s mercy. 

“I dropped to my knees and prayed for all the people praying for me,” recalled Samantha. “I prayed for the staff and any other guests in the woods. I asked the Lord to give them comfort and peace.”

“The Lord Almighty heard me in my moments of fear,” she said, “just as he heard me while I prayed. He kept me safe. He showed mercy to me.”

The storm’s heavy rain and straight-line winds up to 85 mph downed in about 30 minutes at least 1,000 trees, twisting and breaking them in all directions, and damaged roofs and siding on 14 of the retreat center’s 25 buildings, including a number of its 19 hermitages. 

Another storm early the following morning and one more three days later brought more rain, but both were less destructive than the Aug. 26 storm. Altogether, though, the storms dealt a devastating blow to the 36-year-old retreat center where hundreds come annually for retreats in solitude and nature, said Tim Drake, director of Pacem in Terris. 

The 240-acre center, located in central Minnesota about 40 miles north of Minneapolis, now faces a long process of restoration and recovery, he said. 

Despite the extensive damage, the four retreatants staying at the center at the time of the storm were not injured, including one who, like Samantha, stayed in her hermitage and two others who were having dinner in a nearby town, said Drake, who reached them by cellphone.

“There was a news report I saw where someone was describing it and said that it looked like a bomb went off, and that’s accurate,” Drake said. “It’s all kinds of damage and the trees lying in a variety of directions.” 

During the weeks following the storms, tree professionals, staff and volunteers have cleared tree-blocked roads and removed trunks and branches from roofs, though some roofs and exteriors still require repair, he said. Clearing the center’s three miles of trails, still about 60% blocked, will be a long process. Also, a log crushed the cab of the center’s 1962 dump truck. 

Drake said he doesn’t yet know the total cost of cleaning up the devastation, and he doesn’t yet have any estimates of what insurance will cover. A crowd-sourced site has been set up to raise funds for the extensive work, he said. 

While the storms didn’t affect building interiors or break windows at the retreat center, they did damage roofs, fascia, siding, awnings and soffits, Drake said. Fortunately, despite the extent of the damage, only two of its hermitages will be unavailable to retreatants as the center gears up for its fall season.

Rain from the third storm may represent another bright spot. When tree professionals weren’t sure how to remove a large log from the St. Teresa of ávila hermitage without breaking its picture window, pressure from the rain may have caused it to roll off without further damage, Drake said. “Someone said it was probably St. Teresa of ávila who helped remove it.” 

“There are many bright lights, and I keep telling our staff, we have to continue to focus on the positive things,” Drake said. “Every day we’ve had probably one volunteer who’s here to help, maybe with clearing trails; volunteers who have dropped off food, benefactors who have given money to support the relief efforts. God, of course, brings good out of a lot of bad things, and that’s what we’re seeing here.”

Drake said since the storms there is more light in the center’s woods but many of the lost trees were healthy oaks, maples and birch. Those trees have larger canopies than dead and diseased trees, which probably gave the wind leverage to push them over or snap them, he said.

“I did say to our staff that this is God’s way of pruning, and I laughed that he’s kind of a messy pruner,” he said. “I don’t mean that with any disrespect. It’s just a mess. You can’t help but look at the woods and see that it’s been thinned out, so, obviously, the light’s going to get into new places and there’s going to be new growth of some type.” 

The idea of pruning has been part of Drake and his staff’s morning prayer for another reason. When they gather in the chapel within the center’s main building, Our Lady of Pacem, which was spared storm damage, they reflect on the large painting of Christ behind the altar in which he is depicted standing in front of a downed tree.

Mark Balma, the artist who created the painting, told Drake that during a 1999 visit to the retreat center, he saw trees with oak wilt, a fungal disease, being removed. “Many diseased oak trees were being removed,” Balma said, “and so I thought of Jesus as the new tree of life in replacement of the old traditions.”

Samantha said she hopes new life will emerge at Pacem in Terris and more retreatants will come, because God can bring good out of any situation, even from such devastation. 

She cited the fact that her hermitage, named for St. Kateri Tekakwitha, was barely damaged in the storm. “Thousands of downed trees — but not a single hair on my head or any other guest’s head was harmed,” Samantha said. “No one can convince me that that is not the work of God.”

Pacem in Terris will eventually begin replanting some of the forest, Drake said, but even during the loss and cleanup, Christ remains in control. 

“The thing that came to me in my own prayer was that all the brokenness reminds me that we are all broken and that it’s Christ who makes us whole,” he said. “Many of the guests who come here are broken, as well, and many of them share with us some of that brokenness. It’s something that we bring to prayer, and we certainly pray for all the guests who are here. So I think there probably is something that people can reflect on, even in the destruction.”