Maria Lanakila rededicated 16 months after devastating Lahaina wildfire

Maria Lanakila Catholic Church reopened last week in downtown Lahaina, resplendent in white Christmas lights and even capped by a three-quarter moon high over its spire in the West Maui night sky.

“It’s a miracle,” said Joybelle Agustin, a Wailuku resident and Divine Mercy devotee who attended the historic church’s first Mass since the August 2023 wildfires. She recalled that, in the immediate aftermath of the fire, even flowers at the altar didn’t wither, despite flames that consumed most of Lahaina.

Most Reverend Larry Silva, Bishop of Honolulu, presided over the rededication Mass on Wednesday for the 151-year-old church.

Thankfully, the wildfire did not burn Maria Lanakila (Our Lady of Victory), Silva said in his homily. But access to the church was affected, and “that is why you were not able to come here for over a year,” he told an overflow crowd of parishioners. “We’re now very joyful that we are here.”

The devastating wildfire spared the church, its rectory and a classroom building at neighboring Sacred Hearts School. Public access to the church property at the intersection at Waineʻe and Dickenson streets has been strictly restricted by immediate post fire search-and-rescue emergency operations and, later, hazardous debris removal from surrounding properties.

Silva noted in his homily that Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris also reopened recently, five years after a fire burned the 860-year-old church’s roof, destroyed its iconic spire and damaged its roof and upper walls.

Both Maria Lanakila and Notre Dame are named after the Blessed Virgin Mary, Silva said, dedicating Wednesday’s Mass to her and to her “yes to God, the invitation that she received to be the mother of God.”

“And at that moment, the Holy Spirit entered her, and the word, the Eternal Word, became flesh,” he said. “As we recall that great moment in Mary’s life, we remember that a church is important because it is here that we gather together for the Word to come into us, for the Word to take flesh in us.”

Silva said that, the wildfire brought horrible “loss of life, loss of hope, loss of jobs. There were many tears that were shed at that time. There were also those who reached out to those in need, embracing them in their love, giving them food when they were hungry, finding shelter for them.”

“There were thousands and thousands of ways that that Word that had become flesh in us in this church,” Silva said.

While progress has been made, “there is much, much work ahead,” he said, noting that Sacred Hearts School, the convent, the parish center and the entire town of Lahaina need to be rebuilt.

“So there is so much more to do,” he said. “But we come here in hope and even in joy in the face of that because it is the Word of God, Christ made flesh in us, that will enable us to do all that the Lord wants us to do.”

The Maria Lanakila website has a listing of Mass times for both Maria Lanakila in Lahaina and Sacred Hearts Mission Church in Kapalua. Christmas Eve Mass at Maria Lanakila will be at 5:30 p.m. Christmas Eve Mass will start at 5:30 and 9:30 p.m. at Sacred Hearts Mission.

Christmas Day Mass will be at 7 and 9 a.m. at Maria Lanakila. The celebration will be at 7 and 10:30 a.m. that day at Sacred Hearts Mission. A Latin Mass will be celebrated at 1 p.m. Christmas Day at Maria Lanakila.

Within days after the wildfire, Sacred Hearts School relocated temporarily to Sacred Hearts Mission Church in Kapalua and then to 2530 Kekaʻa Drive mauka of the Kāʻanapali Beach Resort. To learn more about the school and about opportunities to support Catholic education for its students, visit its website here.