Easter Week 5
Readings
I - Acts 15: 1-6
II - Jh. 15: 1-8
SAINT DAMIEN OF MOLOKAI
Today the church celebrates the feast of St. Damien of Molokai, a priest from the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. He was Jozef De Veuster, from Belgium, who after joining the fathers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary, took the name Damien in reference to the physician and martyr St. Damien. He had two elder sisters, who were nuns and an elder brother who was a priest in the same congregation. Throughout his studies to the priesthood, Damien prayed fervently before a picture of St. Francis Xavier, the patron of missionaries, to be sent on a mission. He was ordained a priest in 1864 and was sent on mission in North Kohala on the island of Hawaii that faced a public health crisis, to serve in various parishes there. Foreign immigrants, traders and sailors introduced infectious diseases such as cholera, smallpox, influenza, syphilis, whooping cough, and leprosy to the Hawaiian Islands. May native Hawaiian parishioners wo had no immunity contacted these diseases.
Father Damien arrived at the Kalaupapa settlement on May 10, 1873, as a pioneer to help around a thousand lepers living there. Upon arrival, he addressed the community as someone who loves them and is willing to be a father to them, live among them, and even to die with them. He accomplished this mission by training leaders of the place, teaching, setting up farms, painting houses, and organizing the construction of essential buildings such as churches, roads and hospitals. Father Damien was ever ready to participate in physically demanding tasks such as dressing up the wounds of the lepers, digging graves and building coffins. He loved them so much that he ate food by hand with the lepers, shared pipes with them, and lived among them as equals. Father Damien’s work was not never limited to providing physical care; he was an effective catholic priest taking care of their spiritual life as well. He comforted them by telling them that they were always precious in the eyes of God. Father Damien dedicated sixteen years of his life to serving the lepers in Hawaii finally died at the age of forty nine contacting leprosy (Hansen Disease).
On March 23, 1889, Father Damien became bedridden due to his leprosy, and he died on April 15, 1889, at the age of 49. He was buried under the pandanus tree where he had slept upon his arrival on MolokaŹ»i. At the request of King Leopold III of Belgium and the Belgian government, Father Damien’s body was repatriated to Belgium, his homeland, in 1936. He was laid to rest in Leuven, a city near his birthplace, following his beatification in 1995. Father Damien’s right hand was returned to Hawaii and buried in his original grave in MolokaŹ»i. Fr. Damien was declared venerable in 1977 by Pope Paul VI; beautified in 1995 by Pope Jon Paul II and was finally canonised in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI.
In today’s Gospel passage Jesus invites us to be united with him. When we are united with him we will be disposed to do anything that demands of a Christian. Only united in him can we draw the sap of love, peace and joy and be fruitful in our Christian living, glorifying the Lord in all that we do and say as did the saint of the day.
