I know I am a little late with this post, but I've been pondering it for a few days. Father Damien is generally not very far from my thoughts, not least of all on his feast day, and I frequently find myself calling upon his intercession.
Father Damien arrived at the Kalawao leper settlement on the Kalaupapa peninsula of the island of Molokai 140 years ago this past Friday, where he spent the remaining 16 years of life. He arrived in Hawaii 9 years earlier after a 5-month voyage at sea from his beloved home and family.
As you read through the letters he wrote to his family back in Belgium, you soon become aware of how isolated from them he felt. Naturally, in those days communication was not as swift as it is in our day of telephones, airplanes, e-mail, Facebook, Skype, and Face Time. Not only did you have to wait for the length of the voyage for a letter to reach the one to whom you wrote, but you first had to find a carrier heading at least in the general direction of where your letter needed to go. You can imagine how this was not always timely, particularly if someone moved after you sent the letter.
As I look now to the beginning of
my new assignment in the Eternal City - among a culture that is not my own and among a people whose language I do not yet know well, and a quarter of the world away from home, family, and friends - I find myself turning to Father Damien to learn from his example. I think particularly of one letter he wrote to his sister who was a nun in Holland:
Three years now, and not a line from you. Where are you then, my dear sister? Are you off to Heaven already? Not so fast, if you please. A little more time is needed to win that crown. Take pity then on your poor brother, who, by dint of being so long forgotten, will soon become a regular savage among savages. Well, I certainly love my savages, who soon will be more civilized than Europeans. They are learning to read and write.
Another time he answered a letter from his parents, saying that "for a long time I have been distressed and in suspense about you, not knowing what might have happened. I learn to my great joy that you are in good health."
I can only imagine the pain that he must have felt at such a lack of correspondence from home, especially when some of his letters went left unanswered Certainly his love for his family did not diminish with the passage of years, as we learn from others of his letters, but how did he endure this isolation from his family and friends whom he left behind in service of the Gospel?
The answer, really, is quite simple. Just after he left Belgium he wrote a letter home before embarking on the journey to what were then known as the Sandwich Islands, in which he reminded his parents:
Henceforward we shall not have the happiness of seeing one another, but we shall always be united by that tender love which we bear to one another.
He knew that this love has its origin in the love of God. So it is that I find my thoughts turning once again to the most profound words he ever put to paper:
I
find my consolation in the one and only companion who will never leave me, that
is, our Divine Saviour in the Holy Eucharist. . . .It is at the foot of
the altar that we find the strength necessary in this isolation of ours.
Without the Blessed Sacrament a position like mine would be unbearable. But,
having Our Lord at my side, I continue always to be happy and content. . . .
Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the most tender of friends with souls who
seek to please Him. His goodness knows how to proportion itself to the smallest
of His creatures as to the greatest of them. Be not afraid then in your
solitary conversations, to tell Him of your miseries, your fears, your worries,
of those who are dear to you, of your projects, and of your hopes. Do so with
confidence and with an open heart.
He endured the separation from his loved ones back home through his closeness to Jesus Christ present in the Blessed Sacrament.
Even with the greater ease and the swiftness of modern communications, and with the ability to return home once or twice a year, this is a lesson I will continually ask him to teach me.
Please don't think that I am dreading my new assignment; I am looking forward to it, though I do know that there will be some particular hardships that come with it, the separation from family and friends for a great length of time being perhaps the greatest of them.
Concerning the arrival of letters that did come from home, Father Damien once commented:
It is a great happiness to me whenever I have an opportunity of sending news of myself, of reminding you, my dear parents, that on an island in the midst of the great Pacific, you have a son who loves you and a priest who prays for you.
I will soon echo these sentiments not from an island in the Pacific, but from an ancient city on the Italian peninsula.
In the past, I haven't used Skype very much; now I will have to make frequent use of it.
On my desk in my office is a statue of Father Damien that I touched to his relic in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace. As I begin considering what I will bring with me to Rome, this statue will certainly be among the first things packed.
Therefore, your Worship should know that it has pleased us to remove all conditions whatsoever, which were in the rescripts formerly given to you officially, concerning the Christians and now any one of these who wishes to observe Christian religion may do so freely and openly, without molestation. We thought it fit to commend these things most fully to your care that you may know that we have given to those Christians free and unrestricted opportunity of religious worship. When you see that this has been granted to them by us, your Worship will know that we have also conceded to other religions the right of open and free observance of their worship for the sake of the peace of our times, that each one may have the free opportunity to worship as he pleases ; this regulation is made we that we may not seem to detract from any dignity or any religion.
Moreover, in the case of the Christians especially we esteemed it best to order that if it happems anyone heretofore has bought from our treasury from anyone whatsoever, those places where they were previously accustomed to assemble, concerning which a certain decree had been made and a letter sent to you officially, the same shall be restored to the Christians without payment or any claim of recompense and without any kind of fraud or deception, Those, moreover, who have obtained the same by gift, are likewise to return them at once to the Christians. Besides, both those who have purchased and those who have secured them by gift, are to appeal to the vicar if they seek any recompense from our bounty, that they may be cared for through our clemency,. All this property ought to be delivered at once to the community of the Christians through your intercession, and without delay. And since these Christians are known to have possessed not only those places in which they were accustomed to assemble, but also other property, namely the churches, belonging to them as a corporation and not as individuals, all these things which we have included under the above law, you will order to be restored, without any hesitation or controversy at all, to these Christians, that is to say to the corporations and their conventicles: providing, of course, that the above arrangements be followed so that those who return the same without payment, as we have said, may hope for an indemnity from our bounty. In all these circumstances you ought to tender your most efficacious intervention to the community of the Christians, that our command may be carried into effect as quickly as possible, whereby, moreover, through our clemency, public order may be secured [more].
