THE SAINTS IN A YEAR: ST DAMIEN OF MOLOKAI AND HEROIC CHARITY

Fr Billy Swan

To be a committed Christian today requires us to face danger. This is certainly true in places like Nigeria and other parts of the world where persecution is a real possibility with regular attacks taking place on places of worship and where Christians gather. But there is another sense, closer to home, where our faith in Christ moves us out of our comfort zones to embrace a mission that initially provokes fear and where the risks to our lives and health are significant. We think here of great missionaries like St Paul, St Patrick, St Francis Xavier and St Oscar Romero who lived in daily danger while proclaiming Christ crucified and Risen. For these saints and martyrs, their own safety came second to an extraordinary zeal to make Jesus Christ known and loved and for his peace to reign. ‘Caritas Christi urget nos’ (2 Cor. 5:14).

On 10^th May, the Church celebrates the feast day of St Damien of Molokai who represents an army of those the late Pope Francis called ‘the saints next door’ (Rejoice and Be Glad) whose faith shaped their lives into missions of selfless love and service, even when it involved risk to their own health and well-being.

Born Jozef De Veuster in 1840, the future saint grew up in Belgium and was the youngest of seven children. He followed other family members into the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and prophetically, took the religious name of Damien who was a third century physician and martyr who worked with St Cosmos caring for the sick. In 1864, his superiors sent him to Hawaii on mission and two months later he was ordained a priest.

Shortly afterwards, an outbreak of the dreaded disease of leprosy broke out and in order to contain it, the ruler King of the Islands, decided to create a leper colony on the island of Molokai. It was a dreadful place where those suffering from the incurable disease were left to die with minimal help from those who feared contracting the contagious disease themselves. In 1873, four priests volunteered to go and serve there, taking turns on the island. One of them was Fr Damien who soon volunteered to remain there permanently which he did.

Damien’s ministry in Molokai could be described as doing what love demanded. He went to the people, comforted them, anointed them and prepared them for death, made coffins, dug graves, built homes and celebrated the funerals of the dead. In all things, he tried to live like the Good Shepherd in the Gospels who also put himself in danger ministering to lepers so that God’s love might reach them and heal their social and religious exclusion.

After twelve years of ministry on Molokai, Damien contracted the disease himself. Far from feeling sorry for himself and abandoning his mission, he wrote: ‘I make myself a leper with the lepers to gain all for Jesus Christ’. He also testified that the source of his strength was always prayer: ‘It is at the foot of the altar that we find the necessary strength in our isolation’. Fr Damien died on 15^th April 1889. He was beatified by Pope St John Paul II in Brussels in 1995 and canonised by Pope Benedict XVI on 11^th October 2009. He is the patron saint of people with leprosy and the unofficial saint of those with HIV/AIDS.

We value our own safety and rightly so. In doing what is right and what love demands, we ought not to be reckless about own health and must minimise the risks in the accomplishment of our mission. However, saints like St Damien of Molokai remind us that sometimes, the love of Christ and our call to serve, takes us beyond certain limits and that put us in danger. This is the price we lovingly pay to fulfil our mission and vocation that is always Christ centred and other centred. It is a call to heroic charity after the example of the Master who epitomised the following words by his own death for the sake of truth and love: ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’ (John 15:13). Here is the love witnessed to by saints like Maximillian Kolbe, Oscar Romero and Damien of Molokai. They saw that there was something greater than their own survival at stake, a seed that would die but would produce a rich harvest because of it.

For St Damien, he is an inspiration of someone who loved what was unlovable and went to the extreme edges of society to be with those in most need of hope and mercy. Here is a love that allows us to view no one from a human point of view, but rather to see everyone as a soul for whom Christ died.