Damien de Veuster was a Belgian priest of the Sacred Heart Fathers who went to Hawaii to serve as a missionary in 1864. While there, he came to know of the plight of the lepers on the island of Molokai. This was home to a colony of around 800 people who had been sent there due to their leprosy. At the time, there were no known treatments for what is now known as “Hansen’s Disease.” Leprosy was a death sentence. His life was to be one of living the works of mercy.
Fr. Damien immersed himself in the life and struggles of the lepers, caring for their physical and spiritual needs. In doing this, he lived out the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Supplies would be brought to the colony by ship, which would lower them into a boat so that the people on the ship were not in contact with the lepers. This was due to fear of contagion.
The story is told of how at one point, Fr. Damien wanted to go to confession. The priest on the ship was unwilling to get close to him, out of fear of catching the disease. Fr. Damien stood in a boat below the ship, and SHOUTED his confession up to the other priest at the railing. [They probably did it in Latin, but still, that took a lot of humility!]
Fr. Damien recruited some religious sisters to serve in the Molokai mission, the leader of which is also a saint — St. Marianne Cope from Upstate New York. Miraculously (and maybe through sound hygienic practices), none of the nursing sisters ever caught the leprosy. These sisters carried on these works of mercy to the suffering long after the death of Fr. Damien.
In 1885, Fr. Damien was diagnosed with leprosy, but he continued to serve his fellow leper until his death on April 15, 1889. He said: “I make myself a leper with the lepers, to gain all for Jesus Christ.” He was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 11, 2009.
Application:
How does his story apply to you and me? There are times in our lives where we may have felt, or been treated, as if we were lepers. Family, friends, or members of our community may have avoided us because of the choices that we had made in our lives. But there have been people in our lives who cared for us, even when we felt (and even believed) that we were irredeemable. Those individuals were our personal “Damien(s) of Molokai,” who believed that we mattered, even when we didn’t believe it ourselves. We can be grateful for those people who the Lord Jesus brought into our lives.
Another application is that sometimes we might meet someone who just seems to be a hopeless case. Maybe they are self-destructive with drugs, alcohol, or sexual addiction. Maybe they have renounced God and religion altogether. But they seem hopeless to us. We can be a Damien of Molokai to that person, showing them by our words and actions that they are loved — Loved by the One True God who is Infinite Love itself! And through that love and service, we might be their lifeline toward eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord!
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