April 2009
Vol. XXX, No. 4

Dear Oblates and Friends of Portsmouth,

This year Blessed Damien De Veuster, the Leper Priest of Molokai, will be canonized by Pope Benedict, completing the recognition of his sanctity begun by Pope John Paul II at his beatification in 1999.  In the Hall of Statues in the Capitol he is one of the two representatives of the state of Hawaii to be honored with a statue for his heroic life among the lepers and his impact on world opinion.

In the Bible the number of references to leprosy indicate that this was a fairly common disease, from the miraculous healing of Naaman who washed seven times in the river Jordan, in response to the advice of the prophet Elisha, to the cures wrought by Jesus in the Gospel accounts.  Today, in most parts of the world the disease has been checked or eradicated, and we no longer deal with the problem by herding lepers into remote ghettoes, isolated from society, with little or no medical care or hope of a cure.   In countries where this disease was prevalent, those afflicted were, therefore, forced to live in shocking conditions of indescribable squalor, misery and despair, outcasts of society, with death the only escape. One man decided to dedicate himself to relieving the plight of the leper colony in Hawaii; the result of his life-long struggle was to focus attention on this disease as a global problem and to exert a change in attitude from neglect to concern, from horror and loathing to compassion and recognition of their place in society.

Damien De Veuster was born in Belgium, joined a missionary society and served as a priest in Hawaii, eventually volunteering to serve as chaplain to the lepers who had been forcibly removed to a remote section of the island of Molokai, with little provision for the most elementary necessities of life.  Alone for many years, he set to work organizing the people into a community and treating them with a respect that recognized the Christ in each of them; for the first time since contracting their disease they were no longer treated as pariahs, but  given a reason to hope and  a way of  improving their wretched existence.     

For 16 years Damien ministered to his family of lepers, doing what he could to provide them with medical care, with primitive houses which he built himself, and since the disease was incurable, making their coffins and then digging their graves. He was a father figure to them, the one to whom they looked for spiritual consolation and the one responsible for ministering to their physical and temporal needs.  Word of what he was doing eventually reached beyond Hawaii gaining him fame throughout the world in much the same way as did Mother Theresa's mission to the dying and the untouchables of Calcutta but with the difference that his renown only came in his last years and after his death without the help of media and celebrities to promote his cause.  He had to struggle against prejudice, opposition from an ignorant and indifferent bureaucracy, and the spite, intolerance and jealousy of doctors and churchmen.  Five years before his death, he contracted the disease himself, and on the Sunday after his diagnosis, he was able to address his congregation, beginning with the words, "We lepers," at last able to identify completely with his flock.

Among those who did not admire him, and who even stooped to slander, was the Reverend Mr. Hyde, an Anglican clergyman who resented his influence and objected to his methods of dealing with the lepers, even accusing him of immorality.

Shortly after Damien's death at the age of 49 from leprosy, his reputation was vindicated by an unlikely source, the celebrated writer, Robert Louis Stevenson, who came to Hawaii to ascertain the truth about this man who was revered by some and reviled by others. Stevenson had lost his faith in Christianity as a youth and had been brought up in a Calvinist household where he learned to detest Popery.  From a skeptic, he became the most fervent admirer of the leper priest, and wrote a widely publicized defense of him in a Letter to the Reverend Mr. Hyde.  Damien doubtless had never heard of the famous writer, but he would have appreciated the generosity of spirit and love of humanity in a man who did not fear to play with the leper children when he visited Molokai and who donated a piano for their entertainment. Perhaps it was this contact with the legacy of Damien and especially the heroic example of the unselfish Franciscan sisters who had been sent to help care for the lepers that brought Stevenson back to the Christian faith he had once rejected.

When he was leaving the island, one of the sisters asked him for his autograph.  He obliged with a poem which illustrated the deep impression his visit to Molokai had made on him:

"To the Reverend Sister Marianne, Matron" 

To see the infinite pity of this place,
The mangled limb, the devastated face,    
The innocent sufferers smiling at the rod,
A fool were tempted to deny his God.

Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!
He sees, and shrinks, but if he look again
He marks the sisters on the painful shores,
And even a fool is silent and adores.

Stevenson is a good illustration of the power of example; of how contact with genuine altruism can have an effect on our lives.  We don't have to know a saint to be saintly. We don't have to be saints to be good, but when holy people come our way or come to our attention, we should not be indifferent to what they are doing. We, like Stevenson, should open ourselves to the goodness displayed and allow it to have a positive effect on us, as it did to him.  In this way we are truly imitating Christ as Damien did, as the Franciscan sisters did, and when we observe those who are regarded as the refuse of the world, literally and physically outcasts of society, we have to believe that we are actually seeing, in a spiritual sense, Jesus himself.

"What you did to the least of my brethren, you have done to me."

                      
Liturgical Calendar for April
Cycle of Prayer: New Members of Church; Vocations;
Right Use of Media; the Church

5       PALM SUNDAY OF THE LORD'S PASSION
         All Services in Holy Week in the Abbey Church
9       Maundy Thursday - Liturgy: 5 p.m.
10     Good Friday:  Liturgy:  5 p.m.
11     Holy Saturday:  Paschal Vigil:  8 p.m.
12     EASTER SUNDAY: Masses: 7, 8, 9:30 a.m.
19     SUNDAY II  OF   EASTER
21     St. Anselm, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
23     St. George, Martyr, Patron of England
25     St. Mark, Evangelist
26     SUNDAY III OF EASTER
29     St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor of Church
         Patron of Europe 

Note:  The Oblate conference scheduled for April 26 has been canceled because of a conflict in Dom Mark's schedule. The next Day of Recollection will be on May 31.  

Saint Anselm, Abbot, Bishop, Doctor of the Church (1033 - 1109)

This year marks the ninth centenary of the death of Saint Anselm, often referred to as the "Father of Scholasticism," a philosophical movement which sought to express religious dogma within a philosophical framework dependent on the Fathers of the Church, especially St. Augustine, and the teaching of Aristotle.  His best known works, Why God Became Man and the treatise on the Knowledge of the Existence of God, continue to keep his name alive in scholarly circles. Born in Italy, he traveled to France for his education where he eventually became a monk at the recently founded monastery of Bec in Normandy.  Here he was profoundly influenced by the charismatic scholar and Prior, Lanfranc, who was to become the close friend of the Norman Duke, William, famous for his conquest of England in 1066.  Lanfranc was appointed to the primatial See of Canterbury, continuing to be the trusted advisor of the king and pursuing a policy of reforming the English church along Norman lines through ecclesiastical administration, liturgical ritual, and Romanesque architecture.  Anselm, after his election as abbot of Bec, was able to use his long tenure in office for scholarly and spiritual pursuits, a life to which he was ideally suited.  After Lanfranc's death, William II nominated him to the See of Canterbury, where, however, his temperament and continual conflicts with the Anglo-Norman kings caused him bitter disappointment and exile.