A group of us at Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church went down to New Hope Community Church on Indy’s southside for a World AIDS Day event. 

The event wasn’t so much a worship service but a teach-in about AIDS and the local AIDS crisis led by a volunteer from the Damien Center.  Turns out Father Damien was a Catholic priest who lived in the last half of the nineteenth century and ministered to a leper colony in Hawaii.  The Damien Center istelf was founded in 1987 Indianapolis by Episcoplian and Catholic priests.)

I was at an event this summer at our church where we showed the movie Do The Right Thing on its twentieth anniversary.  Someone on facebook called it the “most honest discussion they have had about race in church.”  On this World AIDS Day, I felt that our conversation was the most honest conversation we have had about AIDS in church. 

Again, the conversation was more of a teach-in than anything, but the bluntess of the words–condom, dental dam, semen, vaginal secretion, IV drug use, dirty needles, anal sex–allowed for real questions to be answered.  If more churches and schools could just get all of this out there without embarrassment or restrictions–just blunt and honest talk– I think we’d all be better for it.

BEXAR COUNTY, TEXAS

“He shall therefore burn that garment, whether warp or woof, in the woolen or in linen, or any thing of skin, wherein the plague is: for it is a fretting leprosy; it shall be burnt in the fire.” Leviticus 13: 52

In 1931, a little-known leper colony in Bexar County, Texas caught fire. The fire was on purpose. Abandoned for several years, the county, the owner of the property, decided to demolish it by flame.

The tiny settlement, tucked away at the county’s poor farm, consisted of a five-room “box” house, a barn, and a hen house –- a self-sufficient community.

The county offered the buildings to anyone who would take them, but people were “afraid to go near them,” thinking they held, deep in their grain, the dreaded disease.

With not takers, the buildings were ripped from their foundations and dragged to a flat area where they were heaped together in a circle.

Doused with gas, a county farm worker set them ablaze, and dashed to his car for cover. Fire did its duty, burning away the flesh-eating scourge.

###

A pilgrimage tour honoring Hawaii’s first saint continues on Maui today (Monday, October 26, 2009) as a relic from the famed Father Damien makes stops in Kula, Waihee, Kapalua and Lahaina.

Today’s stops include a visit at the Holy Ghost Church in Kula from 7-11 a.m.  Then, at noon, a reception of the relic with hymn, lei, litany and procession will be held at St. Ann Church in Waihee.  At 5 o’clock this evening, the relic arrives at Sacred Hearts in Kapalua.  And at 6:30 p.m., the final stop on Maui will be at the Maria Lanakila Church in Lahiana where a variety of songs and novenas will be shared into the evening.

The journey continues with stops on Lanai and Kauai before heading to the Friendly Isle of Molokai.

The pilgrimage arrives on Molokai on Friday, October 30, where St. Damien served a community of Hansens’ Disease patients who were quarantined to the remote Kalaupapa Peninsula.

That celebration will include a caravan of bishops on Molokai as well as a procession of students from Damien Memorial School who will carry the relic down the trail to the isolated community.  The relic returns to Honolulu on November 1^st where it will be carried to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace and remain there permanently.

(Posted by Wendy Osher)

I know that when I take my last breath, there will be some distant cousin (on my mother’s side) who will be baptizing me like this. And in death, I’ll be just as offended.

I was born a Catholic and I’ll die one. I’m pretty sure that Father Damien felt like I do, even though unlike me, he WAS a good Catholic.  I’m a pretty lazy one.

This still offends me in a big way. It’s bad enough that someone baptizes a dead person into their church but to then “marry and seal” them for “all eternity” is just… ugly. And pardon me, but sinful, too. I mean, think about it: sealing a Catholic priest to some unknown woman, over 100 years after his death?

ggggggggggah!

Inexcusable.

Kalaupapa, Molokai, Hawaii–Astride a mule, the hairpin curves down sea cliffs to the Kalaupapa National Historic Park yield breathtaking vistas.  The natural cove protected by cliffs served as enforced isolation for leprosy victims from 1866 until 1969.   Some natives were actually tossed from ships as they approached the colony from the sea because sailors were scared to get too close to the victims.  One man, Father Joseph Damien, braved his fears and came to work among the people, helping them to establish water collection systems and farms as well as serving their souls.  Damien eventually contracted Hansen’s Disease himself, dying in 1889 after serving the people of the colony for 12 years.  He is buried next to the church he helped build.

This Sunday, Father Damien was elevated to sainthood by the Catholic Church.

There are still a few patients living in Kalaupapa, and visits to the national park require a permit.  Visitors can fly in, hike down the trail, or take a mule ride down and back.   Despite its tragic history, Kalaupapa soothes the spirit–a fitting resting place for a saint.

DAMIEN DU VEUSTER

The following is a story I submitted to the English edition of L’Osservatore Romano concerning one of the heroes of the 19th century.

A Belgian man who spent his adult life in the South Pacific and is memorialized in the U.S. Capitol will be declared a saint on Oct. 11.

He is Damien de Veuster, a sometimes controversial 19^th century figure, who sacrificed his life to minister to lepers on the Hawaiian island of Molokai.

In addition to Father Damien, Pope Benedict XVI will canonize Archbishop Zygmunt Szcesny Felinski, founder of Russian Catholicism; Father Francisco Coll y Guitart, founder of the Congregation of the Dominican Sisters of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary;  Rafael Arnáiz Barón, a contemplative Trappist monk from Spain; and Jean Jugan, a French woman who founded the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Father Damien was born Jozef de Veuster in the Flemish village of Tremelo on Jan. 3, 1840, one of seven children of a corn merchant.

Still a teenager, Josef , following the example of his brother Auguste, joined the novitiate of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Leuven. In 1860, he became a brother, taking the name Damien.

FATHER DAMIEN

He aspired to be a missionary, and his opportunity came unexpectedly. Auguste – who had taken the religious name Pamphile – was prevented by illness from traveling to Hawaii, and Damien went in his place.

He was ordained a priest in Honolulu in 1864 and was assigned to the Catholic parish in North Kohala.

Hawaii was then beset by infections, including influenza and syphilis, introduced by travelers and seamen. The most problematic ailment, first reported in 1840, was Hansen’s Disease – leprosy – both because it was highly contagious until a treatment was developed in the 1930s, and because most people contracting it in the 19^th century were assured a progressive, disfiguring degeneration of their skin, eyes, and limbs.

To prevent the disease from spreading, Hawaiian authorities in 1866 consigned lepers to an inaccessible colony at Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai. The place was bordered on three sides by the Pacific Ocean and was isolated from the rest of the island by 1600-foot cliffs.

Whatever resources the government provided for the lepers were insufficient. Once they were out of sight and no longer a hazard or an offense to the general population, the residents of the colony declined into a dysfunctional community marked  by poverty, alcohol abuse, violence, and sexual license.

FATHER DAMIEN

There the matter restedwhen, in 1873, Father Damien, after overhearing a conversation about the lepers, asked Louis Maigret, the first apostolic vicar in what was then the Sandwich Islands, for permission to go to Molokai.

Bishop Maigret not only granted permission, but he accompanied Father Damien to Kalauapa where – knowing what was at stake – he introduced the priest to the community of 816 souls as “one who will be a father to you and who loves you so much that he does not hesitate to become one of you, to live and die with you.’’

Nor did Father Damien have any illusions about what his decision meant. Not long after arriving in Kalaupapa, he wrote to his brother and colleague: “I make myself a leper with the lepers to gain all to Jesus Christ.”

His ministry, however, was not confined to liturgy, sacraments, and religious instruction.

He restored civility – forcefully when necessary – built and repaired housing for the lepers – lending his own carpentry skills to the labor of colonists still able to work, improved agriculture, organized schools, treated the sick with his own hands, built coffins and dug graves.

THE YOUNG PRIEST

At first he found conditions almost overwhelming.

“Many a time,” he wrote, “in fulfilling my priestly duties at the lepers’ homes, I have been obliged, not only to close my nostrils, but to remain outside to breathe fresh air. To counteract the bad smell, I got myself accustomed to the use of tobacco.’’

In time, however, he put delicacy and caution aside and ministered directly to people bearing the most grotesque badges of the cruel disease.

He was criticized at times for being demanding and headstrong, particularly when he was soliciting assistance for his lepers.

Joseph Dutton, a American Civil War veteran from Stowe, Vermont, verified this characterization – with an explanation.

Dutton – who joined Damien in 1886 and remained at the colony for more than 40 years, described the priest as “vehement and excitable in regard to matters that did not seem to him right, and he sometimes said and did things that he afterwards regretted … but he had a true desire to do right, to bring about what he thought best. ….”

After a decade of this work, in December 1884, Father Damien realized that he had contracted leprosy.

“Its marks,’’ he wrote to his bishop, “are seen on my left cheek and ear, and my eyebrows begin to fall. I shall soon be completely disfigured. I have no doubt whatever of the nature of my illness, but. I am calm and resigned and very happy in the midst of my people. The good God knows what is best for my sanctification. I daily repeat from my heart, Thy will be done.”

Still, he labored on, often with help that in his later years included Father Louis Conrardy, a Belgian priest, who attended to the colony’s pastoral needs; Mother  Marianne Cope, superior of the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse, who organized a hospital, and James Sinnett, a nurse from Chicago who would eventually have Father Damien as one of his patients.

Father Damien, 49, died on April 15, 1889, and was buried beneath the pandanus tree that had provided his only shelter when he arrived in the colony.

MOTHER MARIANNE COPE

Mother Marianne carried on Father Damien’s work, remaining in Kalaupapa, without ever contracting leprosy, until her death in 1918 at the age of 80. She was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.

In 1935, Father Damien’s remains were transferred to Belgium on a U.S. Navy ship. King Leopold III joined about 100,000 people in receiving the body at Antwerp.

Father Damien, widely known during his lifetime, has been memorialized in many places, including a bronze statue, donated by the State of Hawaii, in the national statuary collection in the U.S. Capitol building; a statue at the Hawaiian state capitol in Honolulu, and several clinics devoted to the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients.

And yet, a month after Damien died, Charles M. Hyde, a Presbyterian minister in Honolulu, wrote a private letter, published without his permission, challenging the positive image of Damien, who had received substantial financial support from Protestant groups. Hyde – who once had publicly praised Damien – now dismissed him as “a coarse, dirty man, headstrong and bigoted,” and accused him of violating his vow of chastity.

Hyde’s letter provoked a furious response from an unexpected source – Robert Louis Stevenson, author of “Treasure Island” and “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and himself a Presbyterian.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Stevenson was living in Samoa for health reasons when he read Hyde’s letter. Stevenson had been friendly with Hyde, but had never met Damien.

But although he was susceptible to infections, he had traveled to the leper community after Damien’s death and remained there for eight days, asking questions about the priest’s ministry.

Based on what he had learned, Stevenson published a very long letter reprimanding Hyde.  Stevenson conceded that Damien may have been “dirty,’’ “unwise,” and “tricky,” but added that the priest was also “ superb with generosity, residual candour, and fundamental good humour. …  A man with all the grime and paltriness of mankind, but a saint and hero all the more for that.”

“Think of the poor lepers annoyed with this dirty comrade,’’ he wrote to the minister. “But the clean Dr. Hyde was at his food in a fine house. … (Y)ou, who were so refined, why were you not there, to cheer them up with the lights of culture?”

Stevenson – who later regretted the harshness but not the content of his response – predicted that in a hundred years Father Damien would be proclaimed a saint.

He was correct about Father Damien if not about the time frame. In April 2008, the Holy See formally acknowledged two miracles attributed to Father Damien’s intercession. In June of that year the Congregation on the Causes of Saints recommended that the church acknowledge the sanctity of the priest who, by choosing to minister to lepers, Stevenson wrote, “shut to with his own hand the door to his own sepulcher.”

STATUE OF FATHER DAMIEN IN HONOLULU

A series of Kalaupapa family workshops begins this week to help people find information about ancestors that were forcibly relocated to the remote Molokai community.  There were an estimated 8,000 individuals who were sent to the Kalaupapa Peninsula between 1866 and 1969 because of government policies regarding Hansens disease.

File Image.

The meeting times are as follows:

• The first meeting is on Oahu at the Kaumakapili Church, located at 766 North King Street in Honolulu.  The family workshopbegins at 6 p.m. Friday, September 18, 2009 followed by a public scoping session regarding the Kalaupapa Memorial from 7 to 9 p.m.
• The Lanai meeting begins at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, September 19, 2009 at Hale Kupuna O Lanai at the Hale Mahaolu Senior Complex.  That will be followed by a memorial public meeting from 2 to 4 p.m. at the same location.
• The Maui meeting will be held from 6-9 p.m. Monday, September 21^st at the Paukukalo Hawaiian Homes Community Center.  The family Workshop begins at 6 p.m. and the Memorial Public Scoping Session runs from 7-9 p.m.
• The Molokai meeting is on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at the Kulana O’iwi Conference Center in Kaunakakai.  The family workshop begins at 6 p.m. and the Memorial Public Scoping Session runs from 7-9 p.m.
• The Kalaupapa meeting is on Saturday, September 26^th at McVeigh hall.  The Family Workshop begins at 9 a.m. and the memorial Public Scoping session runs from 10 a.m. to noon.

Ka ‘Ohana O Kalaupapa and Kalaupapa National Historical Park welcome the public to learn about and share their thoughts about the Kalaupapa Memorial.  The public meetings are being held in conjunction with the preparation of an Environmental Assessment to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act.  Before each meeting is an hour-long family workshop to help anyone find information about ancestors who were sent to Kalaupapa.

Earlier this year, President Barack Obama signed into law the legislation that included the Kalaupapa Memorial Act.  The law states that “The Secretary of the Interior shall authorize Ka ‘Ohana O Kalaupapa, a non-profit organization consisting of patient residents at Kalaupapa National Historical Park, and their family members and friends, to establish a memorial at a suitable location or locations approved by the Secretary at Kalawao or Kalaupapa within the boundaries of Kalaupapa National Historical Park…to honor and perpetuate the memory of those individuals who were forcibly relocated to the Kalaupapa Peninsula from 1866 to 1969.”

Kaumakapili Church was chosen as the site for the first meeting since this was the home church of Kahauliko, who was sent to Kalaupapa on January 6, 1866, and is listed as No. 1 on the Admission Register of persons sent to Kalaupapa.  Consequently, Kahauliko’s name will be listed first on the Kalaupapa Memorial, which will contain the names of the estimated 8,000 individuals sent to the Kalaupapa peninsula because of government policies regarding leprocy.

Comments in writing from individuals on the Big Island and Kauai or anywhere else, can be mailed to:  Ka ‘Ohana O Kalaupapa, P.O. Box 1111, Kalaupapa, HI 96742.

Ka ‘Ohana O Kalaupapa is a non-profit organization that was organized in 2003 and is made up of Kalaupapa residents, their family members, descendants and longtime friends.  Kalaupapa National Historical Park was established in 1980 at the request of the Kalaupapa community.

(Posted by Wendy Osher, Information provided by Valerie Monson, Secretary/Coordinator for Ka ‘Ohana O Kalaupapa)

On Friday I had a date with my friend Vinnie. At long last I would see him perform Aldyth Morris’s one-person play Damien, a story about the Flemish priest, Father Damien de Veuster, who unselfishly spent his life ministering to the lepers isolated at Kalaupapa on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. Father Damien will be canonized on October 11, 2009, in Rome.

I first met Vinnie at Maui Community College when I worked in university relations. He is one of those colleagues/friends who you see every five years or so, and with whom you can just pick up where you left off. Vinnie has performed Damien more than 60-70 times since 2000—on Maui, in the United States and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Europe. I emailed him I finally would be in the audience. “Stay afterward so I can see you,” he wrote back.

With opening-season football games townside signaling bad traffic, I decided to get to the church in Mililani by going the opposite way along the North Shore of Oahu and down the middle of the island. The distance is longer, but the traffic moves, and I enjoy the scenery along the two-lane Kamehameha highway versus the freeway. The route I like goes through Wahiawa, the town I lived in until I was 13. When we pass the Kukaniloko Birthstone State Monument, I know I am almost there.

Rain hides the Waianae Mountains behind the Kukaniloko Birth Stones among the tall trees. The birthing ground of Hawaiian royalty was established in the 12th century, according to Fornander.

Kamehameha Highway runs for just three blocks through the town. I have a habit of reciting the neighborhood places I remember. Some are still there, others are long gone and replaced by fast food joints and nondescript development. Wahiawa served Wheeler Air Force Base and Schofield Barracks on the other side of the singing bridge, and the pineapple industry. The lively little main street had everything.

Annie Uwi’s (18 cents for Love’s Bread), the tofu factory, Doctor De Harne’s, Bank of Hawaii, Pang’s grocery (2-cent deposit refunds for soda bottles), Island Bazaar (drygoods and gifts), Chow Ching’s (gon lo mein, char siu and roast pork on Sunday), Duke’s Clothing, Happy Fountain (high swivel stools, orange freezes, curly saimin with fresh green onions, and the best grilled hot dogs), Elite Market, the stationery store, the barber shop, the taxi stand, Top Hat Bar, Service Motors, the shoe store, the jeweler, the variety store, Benny’s photo studio, Judy’s Florist (big cattleya orchid corsages).

Sometimes before leaving Wahiawa, and if the people I’m with don’t mind, we turn right on Kilani avenue to see my old house. My parents rented it from Uncle Harry who lived next door. He had nine houses amidst a lychee garden. Folks drove all the way from Honolulu to buy lychee. I remember being a baby and playing with Uncle Harry’s earlobes on the chenille bedspread as he tried to get me to nap while he listened to the story on the radio and Aunty Edna fussed in the kitchen . . .

Where I lived 50 years ago, the front porch has been screened in, the mock orange hedge is twice as high, and a gate makes it look less inviting. Everything else looks the same, including the mother lychee tree that must be older than I!

So, you see, every so often I recall my childhood.

As I grow older and work on ascension, and as I observe our 4-month-old granddaughter, I think back on what it was like to be a baby and how important it is for adults to create happy memories for children. Some of my memories weren’t so sweet. I remember the adults laughing at me when I crawled from my room bringing my socks after they asked me to fetch my shoes, feeling frustrated that I could not talk yet to explain why I did that. But I certainly could think it!

I remember emotional things and times that woke up my senses such as when my mother took me aboard a President Lines cruise ship to dine with her visiting friend, and I burned myself on the baked potato.

I remember when Momma took me to Honolulu by taxi on her Thursdays off from piano teaching (I could walk now) to buy music at Metronome and Thayer’s for her pupils, and before coming home we would go to Woolworth, and she would give me a teaspoon of her coffee to drizzle over my vanilla ice cream. Coffee is still my favorite flavor.

(Darling husband thinks it’s amazing I can remember that far back. “Well,” I suggested, “try it. Don’t you remember the smell of your mom?”)

One time I was at a Hawaiian civic club meeting in Wahiawa where they served a bento box lunch. One bite took me back. “Where did this come from?” I asked. “That’s from Marian’s Catering.” Ahhh … I wasn’t able to identify the flavoring, but the taste that took me home was unmistakably Wahiawa from the 1950s. It hadn’t changed.

And just this past July at a friend’s memorial breakfast, someone brought prune bread from Wahiawa. When I was a kid it was called prune cake, and I have been looking for it my whole life. I ordered a prune cake from Chef Instructor Walter Schiess at Kapiolani Community College for my wedding cake, and, unable to find a recipe, he decided, “If it has prunes in it, then it must be a fruit cake.” The Old English wedding cake, three tiers tall, was gorgeous, but not prune cake. When the woman who brought the prune bread saw how ecstatic I was, she gave me a whole loaf to take home. Now I know my sweet memory is alive and well at Kilani Bakery!

Damien. Oh, yes, I was on my way to the play.  Not surprisingly, Vinnie (correct name: Vincent Linares) was FABULOUS as Father Damien. He portrays the character so very passionately. What with Aldyth Morris’s script and the venue of St. John Apostle and Evangelist Church, it was excellent theater on every level. To quote the program notes, “The play finds Damien, awakened from his deathly slumber, taking a journey through his turbulent and compelling life while answering his detractors and critics, a journey that eventually takes him home again.” Home.

On Saturday evening I attended for the first time the Ka Himeni Ana (Old Fashioned Singing)  event at the Hawaii Theatre. This concert and competition has taken place annually since 1983 to encourage the singing of Hawaiian music in the old-fashioned manner without microphones or amplification, with the exception of the steel guitar. The production was filled with nahenahe (soft, sweet) sound, the festive sight of musicians and concert goers in the beautifully renovated theatre, and the fragrant scent of hundreds of fresh ginger blossoms.  Sweet memories, indeed. I plan to go again next year.

To be continued . . .

Copyright 2009 Rebekah Luke

Special note: Vinnie Linares’s final performance of Damien will be on October 24, 2009, at an old church at Makena Beach, Maui. When available, the event details will be posted in Comments below.

@ Alle moeders en Maria’s van de wereld, mijn familie inbegrepen! Gelukkige moederdag! Ja, ik zeg het kinderlijk spontaan met een gedichtje, een ‘kindervers’, van meer dan 100 jaar oud, en een kaarsje van liefde …  

… met een link history enkel voor zondagse literatuurliefhebbers, verborgen onder het klikje (Meer …). [Ach ja, ik had het minder zoeterig kunnen doen, niet zo sentimenteel, niet zo educatief, niet zo eeuwig leraars, wel humoristischer, speelser, krachtig geëngageerd, vlijmscherp kritisch in een column, of pacifistischer, zoiets als Iedereen lief doen! Nu!!! Maar of ik dat gekund zou hebben - zou hebben gekund - zou gekund hebben?! Dàt is de hamvraag!]mother love poem: via Google, meer dan 21 000 000 hits.

Tekst: via Google Books, Bed in Summer van Robert Louis Stevenson, in: R. L. STEVENSON, A Child’s Garden of Verses, Dover, 1992, (= Children’s Thrift Classics), p. 1.

Datering: via National Library of Scotland, einde 19e eeuw. Ik koos voor de pagina met een tekening van de zesjarige Stevenson voor zijn moeder.

Gedicht opgedragen aan: via Google Books, To Alison Cunningham, from her boy, in: A Child’s Garden, p. viii. 

Over Alison Cunninghams, haar moederlijke zorg voor de jonge Stevenson en haar relatie met de familie:  The New York Times, archive-free, 13 augustus 1913.

Robert Louis Stevensons brief aan Pater Damiaan, Father Damien: Fullbooks, An open letter to the Reverend Dr. Hyde of Honolulu, kan hier in dit Damiaanjaar niet ontbreken.

Nu ja, ik had zoveel gedichten kunnen kiezen … Het hadden ook Vlaamse klassiekers kunnen zijn, beroemde moedergedichten uit de Nederlandse literatuurgeschiedenis van de 20e eeuw. Wie zou ik kiezen: Claus of Elsschot? Of hedendaagse, vers van de pers, uit Schemerzones, de bundel 2009 van Gwy Mandelinck.

Blessed Damien de Veuster

Blessed Damien de Veuster, commonly known as Fr. Damien, was a priest in the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (Picpus Fathers). He was assigned first to a parish on Molokai and then to the leper colony at Kalaupapa. Through his service and self-sacrifice, Fr. Damien gained the respect of the Hawaiian government and many non-Catholic officials. Father Damien died as a leper on Kalaupapa on April 15, 1889.

Our Lady of the Angels, pray for us!

Blessed Damien de Veuster of Molokai, pray for us!

(For a more thorough reflection on Father Damien’s life click here.)

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Fr. Damien as a young man

When I read this morning that Father Damien De Veuster, currently beatified, would be canonized on October 11th, I was completely overjoyed. Father Damien, as so many of his devotees refer to him, is one of my favorite saints and a man whose faith was tested in ways that we simply cannot imagine.Father Damien was born into a pious family in Belgium. Damien’s father wanted him to continue in the family business and become a grain merchant. However, Damien felt the first stirrings of a religious vocation. His older brother, Pamphile, had become a priest with the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (Picpus Fathers), who were renowned for their work in the missions. Father Pamphile eventually persuaded his brother to join him at the major seminary to which their parents reluctantly agreed.

Father Damien was not a remarkable student at the seminary. His superiors didn’t think that he was anything special. During Father Damien’s diaconal year, the bishop of Hawaii called on his confreres in the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts to send him a number of missionaries to help him. At this time, Hawaii was still a kingdom and the Picpus fathers were some of the earliest missionaries there. Among their work at this time was the foundation and building of schools.

Father Pamphile had volunteered to go to the missions, but an illness overtook him that prevented him from leaving. Without a second thought, his younger brother turned around and told him that he would go in his place. The general of the congregation accepted this arrangement and ordained Damien a priest before his departure for Hawaii.

Father Damien’s earliest work in Hawaii was as a parish priest on the isolated island of Molokai. There were several mission stations on the island and Father Damien as well as another priest were placed in charge of these. Some two years after his arrival, however, Father Damien was sent to minister to the leper colony at Kalaupapa. It was in this most unexpected of places that Father Damien would become a saint.

Leprosy was a relatively new disease in Hawaii. During the early 1800s, the disease had arrived through various European traders. The Hawaiian government was alarmed by the disease and forcibly removed many of its infected subjects to the colony at Kalaupapa. This colony was located in one of the most isolated parts of the island. Few people ever went there and everybody knew that if one was sent to Kalaupapa that it would be a death sentence.

At this mission station, the natives lived in an almost barbaric manner. Due to the ravages of the disease, many of them lived in broken down houses that could not easily be repaired. The local parish church was in a run down state, while the moral state of Father Damien’s flock would have sent weaker willed priests running for the hills.

When Father Damien all of these conditions, he was not afraid. Rather, he began strenuously exerting himself on behalf of his flock. He preached against the polygamy that was so acceptable to the Hawaiian natives. He built a new church out of stone and created an orphanage for those children that were deprived of their parents. He taught catechism classes and ran the local school. If there was somebody that was sick or dying, Father Damien would always rush to his or her side to administer the Last Sacraments. No sacrifice was too great for Father Damien and not one person was left uncared for at the Kalaupapa colony.

Yet Father Damien also had many heavy crosses while he was ministering on Molokai. Perhaps, the heaviest for him was loneliness. Since Father Damien had been sent to work among the lepers, it was not possible for the bishop or his superiors to send him a companion. The superiors were afraid that Father Damien’s assistant would also be infected with leprosy. Even though Father Damien begged his superiors over and over to send someone to help him, no help arrived. For the most part, except for a couple of years here and there, Father Damien was alone.

Even worse than the loneliness, however, was the distrust of Father Damien’s superiors. Once Father Damien’s work became well known around the world, people of different Christian denominations began to send him money for the school, the orphanage, and the maintenance of the lepers. The money was sent directly to the headquarters of Father Damien’s congregation in Paris and then forwarded to Hawaii. Due to their suspicions of the various non-Catholic benefactors, however, Father Damien’s superiors refused to send him the money.

Month after month and year after year, Father Damien would write letters to his superiors for money. It was desperately needed in a place that was so poor and where everything needed to be repaired. Eventually, the superiors sent Father Damien some of the funds that they had received from abroad. Yet when Father Damien complained that it wasn’t enough, he was told that he would have to be satisfied with what he received.

In many ways, Father Damien’s leprosy was the crown of martyrdom that had been waiting for him when he had arrived at Kalaupapa. During the last years of his life, Father Damien became a living wound like many of the people that he had served so lovingly for so long. In his state, he continued to minister as much as he could until he became too sick. Then, his superiors sent another priest to administer the Sacraments to the leper colony.

Even though he was at death’s door, however, Father Damien was consoled during his final years. A group of Franciscan sisters led by Mother Marianne Kop had arrived on the island to help Father Damien run the orphanage. A former American Union soldier named Brother Joseph came and helped Father Damien to run the parish.

When Father Damien died in 1889, many of his lepers believed that he had been a saint. A picture taken of him during his final years was printed in many different newspapers around the world. The life of Father Damien became a cause celebre not only in the wider world, but almost among scientists who carefully examined his cause in order to determine the causes of leprosy and how it could be prevented.

Father Damien has been to me a model of what a priest should be. In his particular circumstances, Father Damien did much more than what most would have done. As a priest, he was obligated to care for his flock and that is exactly what he did. Despite the heavy crosses that Father Damien received from Our Lord, he was able to remain faithful to the end and to sacrifice himself over and over again for those who needed him the most.

As a missionary, Father Damien teaches us how to look at those around us who are suffering. As I mentioned in an article yesterday, the love of Christ impels us to love one another and to pray for one another. Father Damien did much more than this. He was willing to live out Our Lord’s famous worlds that “no man has greater love than he who would lay down his life for his friends.” That is exactly what Father Damien did.

In our own days, Father Damien is an excellent role model in how we should live our lives. While we may not be sent to minister to the lepers, there are people out there who really need our encouragement and love. Whether they be a homeless person at the bus station or a woman going to a food bank because she cannot afford to feed her children, all of these people deserve our love and care. If they ask us for help, we cannot refuse for they are the lepers that we have been sent to help and evangelize.

Our Lady of the Angels, pray for us!

Blessed Damien De Veuster of Molokai, pray for us!

[AP]

Hawaii State Archive: Father Damien

A 19th-century Belgian priest who ministered to leprosy patients in Hawaii, and died of the disease, will be declared a saint this year at a Vatican ceremony presided over by Pope Benedict XVI.

The Rev. Damien de Veuster’s canonization date of Oct. 11 was set Saturday.

[read more...]

The Vatican is expected on February 21 to announce the date of Father Damien’s canonization.  So much has been written about the famed leper priest that I feel no need to discuss here the basic facts of his life.   After his death from leprosy grave libels were made against Father Damien, chiefly by a presbyterian minister C.M. Hyde, who, oddly enough, had praised Father Damien during his life.

The defense of Father Damien came from an unsual source, the novelist Robert Louis Stevenson.  Stevenson had visited Molokai shortly after the priest’s death and had been deeply moved by what Father Damien had accomplished.  When the libels of Hyde against Father Damien were published in the newspapers, Stevenson took up his pen and composed a reply to Hyde in the form of an open letter.

I have always been moved by the ending of Stevenson’s  letter: 

“This scandal, when I read it in your letter, was not new to me. I had heard it once before; and I must tell you how. There came to Samoa a man from Honolulu; he, in a public- house on the beach, volunteered the statement that Damien had “contracted the disease from having connection with the female lepers”; and I find a joy in telling you how the report was welcomed in a public-house. A man sprang to his feet; I am not at liberty to give his name, but from what I heard I doubt if you would care to have him to dinner in Beretania Street. “You miserable little ——-” (here is a word I dare not print, it would so shock your ears). “You miserable little ——,” he cried, “if the story were a thousand times true, can’t you see you are a million times a lower —– for daring to repeat it?” I wish it could be told of you that when the report reached you in your house, perhaps after family worship, you had found in your soul enough holy anger to receive it with the same expressions; ay, even with that one which I dare not print; it would not need to have been blotted away, like Uncle Toby’s oath, by the tears of the recording angel; it would have been counted to you for your brightest righteousness. But you have deliberately chosen the part of the man from Honolulu, and you have played it with improvements of your own. The man from Honolulu–miserable, leering creature–communicated the tale to a rude knot of beach-combing drinkers in a public-house, where (I will so far agree with your temperance opinions) man is not always at his noblest; and the man from Honolulu had himself been drinking–drinking, we may charitably fancy, to excess. It was to your “Dear Brother, the Reverend H. B. Gage,” that you chose to communicate the sickening story; and the blue ribbon which adorns your portly bosom forbids me to allow you the extenuating plea that you were drunk when it was done. Your “dear brother”–a brother indeed–made haste to deliver up your letter (as a means of grace, perhaps) to the religious papers; where, after many months, I found and read and wondered at it; and whence I have now reproduced it for the wonder of others. And you and your dear brother have, by this cycle of operations, built up a contrast very edifying to examine in detail. The man whom you would not care to have to dinner, on the one side; on the other, the Reverend Dr. Hyde and the Reverend H. B. Gage: the Apia bar-room, the Honolulu manse.

But I fear you scarce appreciate how you appear to your fellow-men; and to bring it home to you, I will suppose your story to be true. I will suppose–and God forgive me for supposing it–that Damien faltered and stumbled in his narrow path of duty; I will suppose that, in the horror of his isolation, perhaps in the fever of incipient disease, he, who was doing so much more than he had sworn, failed in the letter of his priestly oath–he, who was so much a better man than either you or me, who did what we have never dreamed of daring–he too tasted of our common frailty. “O, Iago, the pity of it!” The least tender should be moved to tears; the most incredulous to prayer. And all that you could do was to pen your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage!

Is it growing at all clear to you what a picture you have drawn of your own heart? I will try yet once again to make it clearer. You had a father: suppose this tale were about him, and some informant brought it to you, proof in hand: I am not making too high an estimate of your emotional nature when I suppose you would regret the circumstance? that you would feel the tale of frailty the more keenly since it shamed the author of your days? and that the last thing you would do would be to publish it in the religious press? Well, the man who tried to do what Damien did, is my father, and the father of the man in the Apia bar, and the father of all who love goodness; and he was your father too, if God had given you grace to see it.”

I just had one of those “That’s it!” moments.  So I wanted to share it.  Have you ever felt that you were getting more steady and solid in your faith, only to then feel more unnerved and toppled and helpless in the face of so much suffering in the world?  I’ve had that feeling lately and especially as I wonder how I could live more deliberately, with some jubilee principles, when the needs are so many and so massive.  

Richard Foster, in a piece on spiritual formation for Christianity Today, posted February 4, 2009, says the following:

“Finally, we come to the issue of cultural renewal, or what in theology is called the “cultural mandate.” I can only hint here at what that might look like.

“The devotional masters write much about training the heart in two opposite directions: contemptus mundi, our being torn loose from all earthly attachments and ambitions, and amor mundi, our being quickened to a divine but painful compassion for the world.

“In the beginning God plucks the world out of our hearts—contemptus mundi. Here we experience a loosening of the chains of attachment to positions of prominence and power. All our longings for social recognition, to have our name in lights, begin to appear puny and trifling. We learn to let go of all control, all managing, all manipulation. We freely and joyfully live without guile. We experience a glorious detachment from this world and all it offers.

“And then, just when we have become free from it all, God hurls the world back into our heart—amor mundi—where we and God together carry the world in infinitely tender love. We deepen in our compassion for the bruised, the broken, the dispossessed. We ache and pray and labor for others in a new way, a selfless way, a joy-filled way. Our heart is enlarged toward those on the margins. Indeed, our heart is enlarged toward all people, toward all of Creation.

“It was amor mundi that hurled Patrick back to Ireland to be the answer to its spiritual poverty. It was amor mundi that thrust Francis of Assisi into his worldwide ministry of compassion for all people, for all animals, for all Creation. It drove Elizabeth Fry into the hellhole of Newgate prison, and prompted William Wilberforce to labor his entire life for the abolition of the slave trade. It sent Father Damien to live and suffer and die among the lepers of Molokai, and propelled Mother Teresa to minister among the poorest of the poor in India and throughout the world.

“And it is amor mundi that compels millions of ordinary folk like you and me to minister life in Christ’s good name to our neighbor, our nigh-bor: “the person who is near us.”

I truly hope I have a little amor mundi developing in me. 

To read the whole article: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/january/26.29.html 

The Colony: The Harrowing True Story Of The Exiles Of Molokai by John Tayman provides lots of information about this infamous community in Hawaii, but somehow I was disappointed. I enjoyed the beginning & end of the book the best. These passages explore the native people of Hawaii who contracted Hansen’s disease (also known as leprosy). I also found the story of Father Damien fascinating and heartbreaking as well. The struggles of the early “colony” are explored with good descriptions and insights into the problems facing very ill people in a remote place with little or no supplies. I guess for me the book veers off course when so much of the book is dedicated to the people that were administrating the “colony” rather than the patients, although some, such as Father Damien, crossed over to become victims of the terrible disease as well. As I read, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was bothering me until I read the notes at the end. The three infected people whose stories were extensively explored at the end of the book all declined to be further involved with the project because they”…raised objections to, among other things, certain editorial decisions connected with the book. These included the title, aspects of the book’s content, and my [the author's] use of select terms and details specific to the disease and its victims.” Although for the most part I thought the author displayed respect for the victims, I also understand their unease with the some of the writing. Taking that into account, there is a lot of historical information here and many people would be suprised to learn that some people still lived in the community on Molokai as late as 2004.  Submitted by Pillbug2

Waikiki church plans Damien museum

Father Damien Museum (photo spread)

more about Blessed Joseph de Veuster

Father Damien Declared Saint

Father Damien on the road to sainthood

The faces behind the icons

more about Blessed Damien