#damian de molokai

[cruger2984]

THE DESCRIPTION OF SAINT DAMIEN DE VEUSTER (Father Damien) The Patron of People with Leprosy and the Diocese of Honolulu Feast Day: May 10, April 15 (U.S. Episcopal Church)

"Turn all your thoughts and aspirations to heaven. Work hard to secure for yourself a place there for ever."

Damien de Veuster, aka Damien of Moloka'i, was born Jozef 'Jef' de Veuster, on January 3, 1840 in Tremelo, Brabant, Belgium. Josef was the youngest of seven children and fourth son of the Flemish corn merchant Joannes Franciscus ('Frans') De Veuster and his wife Anne-Catherine ('Cato') Wouters. In 1860, he entered the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (Picpus Fathers), and took the name of Damien.

He would pray everyday before an image of St. Francis Xavier, with the desire to be sent on a mission overseas. Three years later, his prayers were answered, and he was destined to Hawaii. After his ordination at the Honolulu Cathedral (now called Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace where his relics held) in 1864, Father Damien was assigned to North Kohala.

At that time, an epidemic of leprosy affected thousands of Hawaiians; the disease was highly contagious and at that time incurable. In 1865, it was decided that all lepers should be confined to the island of Moloka'i, where the living situation was desperate, with lack of food and medicines.

With great courage and faith, Father Damien volunteered for the lepers' colony, aware that he was signing his own death sentence, since Moloka'i was declared the island of no return.

As soon as he arrived, he build the parish of St. Philomena and began assisting the people. His role was not limited to religious practices; he founded schools, established orphanages, organized working farms, built homes and furniture, dressed the wounds, made coffins, and dug graves.

In a letter to his brother Auguste (Father Pamphile), he wrote: 'I make myself a leper with the lepers, to gain all to Jesus Christ.'

In 1884, Damien inadvertently put his foot into boiling water, but he felt nothing: he suddenly discovered that he had contracted the disease.

Damien died of leprosy on April 15, 1889 at the age of 49 in Kalaupapa, Moloka'i, and was buried under the pandanus tree of the cemetery, where he first slept upon his arrival on Moloka'i.

Father Damien was beatified by St. John Paul II at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Koekelberg) in Brussels on June 4, 1995, and canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 11, 2009, and declared as the patron of people with leprosy. His major shrine can be found in Leuven, where his bodily relics held, and in Moloka'i, where his hand relics held.

[catholic-saint-tournament]

Modern Saint Bracket Announcement

Instead of waiting until Sunday, the modern bracket will open immediately after the post-schism bracket is over. This is the modern bracket, which will be followed by a final four, and then there will be even MORE polls (losers' brackets, Marian apparitions, we're going all summer baby.)

Catholic Saint Tournament Modern Bracket Round 1 Pairings:

St Therese of Lisieux vs St Elizabeth Ann Seton

St Padre Pio (of Pietrelcina) vs St Charles de Foucauld

St Maximilian Kolbe vs St Benilde Romancon

St John Bosco vs St John Neumann

St Mother Teresa (of Calcutta) vs St Arnold Janssen

St Jacinta Marto vs St Edith Stein

St Maria Goretti vs St Marianne Cope

St Charles Lwanga (& co) vs St John Vianney

St Oscar Romero vs St Josemaria Escriva

St Bernadette vs St Damian of Molokai

St Faustina vs St Catherine Laboure

St Mary MacKillop vs St Katharine Drexel

St Gemma Galgani vs St Frances Xavier Cabrini

St John Henry Cardinal Newman vs Pope St John Paul II

Pope St John XXIII vs St Mark Ji Tianxiang

St Francisco Marto vs Sts Louis & Zelie Martin (package deal)

You can still submit nominations for beatified folks, propaganda for your favorite saints, or other thoughts in the ask box! Or suggestions for future polls, questions, etc.

May the best saint win!

[fictionadventurer]

Top 5 religious artworks? Top 5 pop/or rock songs? And top 5 obscure saints?

Top 5 Religious Artworks

The stained glass windows in my home parish (special shout-out to the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Coronation of Mary).

That picture of Mary and Elizabeth laughing for joy.

Any picture of St. Joseph and Jesus where he's old enough to walk

The big, fancy Lady of Fatima statue us kids got our mom for Mother's Day a few years ago.

Most Pietas

Top 5 Pop or Rock Songs

Of course I've forgotten every song I've ever heard, so here's some that come to mind.

"Old Time Rock and Roll" by Bob Seger

"Drops of Jupiter" by Train

"Tell Her About It" by Billy Joel

"All for You" by Sister Hazel

"King of Anything" by Sara Bareilles

Top 5 Obscure Saints

(Not sure how obscure these are, but here's what I got).

St. Tarcisius. Dying for the Eucharist is about as dramatically Catholic as it gets.

St. Charles Lwanga: African saint martyred for helping kids escape from a pedophile king. It's a pretty dramatic story.

St. Damian of Molokai: Devoting your life to running a leper colony is pretty hardcore.

St. Frances of Rome: A married saint who opened her house to plague victims and got food replenishing miracles for it is pretty cool, and that's only the beginning of her cool miracle stories.

St. Jane Frances de Chantal: She was in a saint book I had as a kid, and I remember liking her story of raising kids and then starting a religious order

[riverdamien]

Damien of Molokai

"Sloughing Towards Galilee!

May 10, 2024

The Feast of Damien of Molokai

".. .But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.  ."John 16:20-33!

The saint we celebrate on May 10, Damien de Veuster, had the same verve. An internet search yields two telling photos of Damien. In one, he is a young, broad-shouldered, farm-boy-turned-missionary. In the other, he is older and portly. Beneath a wide-brimmed hat, his face is swollen and disfigured by the leprosy that would go on to take his life. That strapping young man left his native Belgium and spent his life among the lepers of Hawaii. He lived and died, fearless.

Damien had already been several years in Hawaii, when the authorities, in an effort to contain the spread of the contagion, began to ship the lepers to the remote peninsula of Molokai. Each leper was ripped from his or her family and community. Each man, woman, and child suffered some stage of the disfiguring and debilitating illness with no hope of cure. In the remote and inaccessible Molokai, with only the bare necessities of life, the lepers’ sorrow soon gave way to despair. Refuse piled up. Dead bodies lay unburied. Drunkenness and debauchery were rife.

When the Hawaiian bishop asked his priests for a volunteer to live among these abandoned souls, Damian came forward first. On May 10, 1873, he landed on Molokai to serve the 800 residents. He began by addressing their basic needs –the essentials. He bandaged wounds. He buried the dead. He flexed his farm boy muscles in a thousand tasks: rebuilding huts, planting trees, digging gardens, building a system to carry water. He taught them songs and organized a school.

Early on, Damian chose to ignore all the words of caution about proper hygiene. He washed the bodies of the lepers, dipped his food in the same dish with them, placed communion on their tongues. Long before he contracted leprosy himself, he began his homilies with the words, “We lepers…”—such was his willingness to identify with those he served.

But Damien was keenly aware that no sheer force of will could keep a man among such misery. No human being can persevere in the face of wretchedness on principle alone. What anchored Damien’s existence was a living reality: Christ present here and now.

Damien found in the Eucharist his source and center. He built an adoration chapel and spent hours himself before the Blessed Sacrament. “Without the continuous presence of our Divine Master in my poor chapel,” he wrote, “I would not have been able to persevere in my resolve to share the lepers’ fate.”

He taught the lepers to pray with him before the Blessed Sacrament, to offer their sufferings in union with his Sacred Heart. And thus their deaths, united to that of Christ, began to speak of the Resurrection. “The cemetery and huts of the dying,” he confessed, “are my most beautiful books of meditation.” And so, in the end, when Damien discovered in his own flesh the telltale signs of the disease, he could rejoice: “There is no longer any doubt about it—I am a leper. Praised be the Good Lord!” Death came three years later. Though ravaged by the disease, Damien was at peace and died with a smile on his face.

Damien is my religious name, given me by the Order of Christian Workers, the first of the century, a name given because I work with the “lepers of our society,” and one which with use in California has become one my of legal middle names. I own it proudly!

Suffering is the crucible in which one’s trust in God is tested, and intensified. Fidelity under the presence of suffering is what keeps us in God.

 Jesus described this experienced in the Gospel today, it happens again and again, symbolized by the woman in labor.

In two days I will remember a rainy night on May 12, many years ago,  driving down a rural road from my church, the tires slipped, and the car landed in a ditch, crushing my young brother’s chest, killing him instantly, launching me into the worse suffering of my life; some years later when I suggested to my District Superintendent, I was questioning my sexuality, and he removed me from my parish within a day, and all of my clergy friends, several hundred, turned their backs on me in those moments, my suffering was intense, and in the grindstone of suffering my life has been shaped.

Many years later as I sat in one of the restaurants where “Toast” now is, a seminarian, an older woman, said in much fear, “You need to get off these streets now or you will be labeled as one of THEM.”

Damien was labeled one of “them”, he was accused of sleeping with the women (that is how he caught leprosy—never mind he bathed, bandaged, and held them in death), stealing money, and not truly believing in God; and finally he suffered immeasurably from the disease.

I find myself agitated with individuals who believe they understand what being “gay” or “homeless” is like, for only in experiencing that suffering can one understand, you  can never go home and take off your clothes and forget about it, for you always remain “gay” or “homeless” when you experience both of them. I fight all the time not to over eat because there were days on the street I did not have food, and have a closet full of clothes because there were months and I mean months  I had only those I was wearing, take two showers a day, for there were times I had every two weeks,  the wounds remain.

The streets are my home, and I am considered as my homeless friends are considered a leper by many.

 Yet, like Damien, what I have found, is:

“Home,” says Glinda the Good, “is a place we all must find, child. It’s not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we’re always home, anywhere.” [3]   Deo Gratis! Thanks be to God!

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Fr. River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.T.

Post Office Box 642656

San Francisco, CA 94164

www.temenos.org

paypal.com

415-305-2124

Fr. River Sims, D.Min., D.S.T.

Director

Prayer of St. Brendan!

"Help me to journey beyond the familiar

and into the unknown.

Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You. Christ of the mysteries I trust in You to be stronger than each storm within me.

I will trust in the darkness and know that my times, even now, are in Your hands.

Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,

and somehow, make my obedience count for You"

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(Temenos and Fr. River seek to remain accessible to everyone. We do not endorse particular causes, political parties, or candidates, or take part in public controversies, whether religious, political or social--Our pastoral ministry is to everyone!

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[catolicos-buscando-la-santidad]

[anastpaul]

Memorials of the Saints - 10 May

Memorials of the Saints – 10 May

St John of Avila (1499-1569) “Apostle of Andalusia”– Doctor of the Church About St John:   https://anastpaul.wordpress.com/2018/05/10/saint-of-the-day-10-may-st-john-of-avila-1499-1569-apostle-of-andalusia-known-as-father-master-avila-doctor-of-the-church/

St Joseph de Veuster (1840-1889) – St Damian of Molokai “The Martyr of…

[puntadasdefamilia]

SANTOS Y VIDA San Damián de Molokai, Sacerdote https://santosyvida.blogspot.com/2020/04/san-damian-de-molokai-sacerdote.html

[ultra-jose-us]

Fue un ángel en el infierno

[anastpaul]

Quote/s of the Day – 10 May – Thursday of the Sixth Week of Eastertide, the Memorials of St John of Avila (1499-1569) “Apostle of Andalusia” “Father Master Avila” – Doctor of the Church and St Joseph de Veuster (1840-1889) – St Damian of Molokai

“Turn yourself round like a piece of clay and say to the Lord: I am clay, and You, Lord, the potter. Make of me what You will.”

“Withdraw your heart from the world before God takes your body from it.”

Dear brothers and sisters, I pray God may open your eyes and let you see what hidden treasures He bestows on us in the trials from which the world thinks only to flee. Shame turns into honour when we seek God’s glory. Present affliction become the source of heavenly glory. To those who suffer wounds in fighting His battles, God opens His arms in loving, tender friendship. That is why He (Christ) tells us, that if we want to join Him, we shall travel the way He took. It is surely not right that the Son of God should go His way on the path of shame, while the sons of men walk the way of worldly honour: “The disciple is not above his teacher, nor the servant greater than his master.”

St John of Avila “Father Master Avila” (1499-1569)

“The Blessed Sacrament is indeed the stimulus for us all, for me as it should be for you, to forsake all worldly ambitions.   Without the constant presence of our Divine Master upon the altar in my poor chapels, I never could have persevered casting my lot with the lepers of Molokai, the foreseen consequence of which, begins now to appear on my skin and is felt throughout the body.   Holy Communion being the daily bread of a priest, I feel myself happy, well pleasedand resigned in the rather exceptional circumstances, in which it has pleased Divine Providence to put me.”

St Father Damien of Molokai (1840-1889)

(via Quote/s of the Day - 10 May - Thursday of the Sixth Week of Eastertide, the Memorials of St John of Avila (1499-1569) "Apostle of Andalusia" "Father Master Avila" – Doctor of the Church and St Joseph de Veuster (1840-1889) – St Damian of Molokai)

[anastpaul]

10 May – The Memorial of St Damian de Veuster de Molokai SS.CC. Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary – Martyr of Molokai – (1840-1889) Religious Priest, Missionary – known as “Martyr of Molokai”, “Martyr of Charity”, “Apostle to the Lepers” – Patron of lepers.

St Joseph de Veuster was born in Belgium on January 3, 1840.    While at college, he decided God was calling him to be a priest.   He joined the same community his brother had joined and took the name Damien. Damien’s brother had dreamed of being a missionary overseas.   But he became ill and was unable to go.   Damien offered to go in his place.   He traveled to Hawaii and was ordained in Honolulu.

For nine years, Damien served the people in different villages around Hawaii.    While working, he heard about a settlement of lepers on the island of Molokai.    He was told that life on the island was terrible for the lepers.   They were very poor and there was not one doctor or priest on the island.   Father Damien thought he was needed there.   He went to Molokai to work with the lepers.

Those who could walk came to meet Father Damien’s boat.   They wanted to see this priest who had come to work with them.    They were sure he wouldn’t stay long when he saw what life there was like.    Lepers often have unpleasant sores and even lose fingers and toes.    Because there were no laws or police on the island, many who were not very ill lived wild lives.

Father Damien got busy right away.    He cleaned up huts, nursed those who were very sick and tried new medicines.    Those able to help were put to work building better houses.   Father Damien preached and offered Mass but he also built roads, water systems, orphanages and churches.    He even started a choir and a band.    He made the lepers feel that they were people with dignity.    They learned to better respect themselves and one another.

Father Damien always began his homily with “My dear lepers.”    One Sunday he stood before his congregation and began his homily by saying “My fellow lepers.”   At first, it was very quiet.    Then people began to sob.    Their beloved Father Damien had gotten the disease.    Even though he was ill, Father Damien carried on his work.    Eventually, a group of Franciscan sisters from New York, under the leadership of St  Marianne Cope, came to help. Father Damien died when he was 49 years old.

[anastpaul]

Blessed Memorial of S Damian de Veuster de Molokai - 10 May

Father Damien had become internationally known before his death, seen as a symbolic Christian figure caring for the afflicted natives.   His superiors thought Damien lacking in education and finesse but knew him as “an earnest peasant hard at work in his own way for God.”   News of his death on 15 April was quickly carried across the globe by the modern communications of the time, by steamship to Honolulu and California, telegraph to the East Coast of the United States and cable to England, reaching London on 11 May. Following an outpouring of praise for his work, other voices began to be heard in Hawaiʻi.

Representatives of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches in Hawaii criticised his approach.    Reverend Charles McEwen Hyde, a Presbyterian minister in Honolulu, wrote in August to fellow pastor, Reverend H. B. Gage of San Francisco.    Hyde referred to Father Damien as “a coarse, dirty man,” who contracted leprosy due to “carelessness”. Hyde said that Damien was mistakenly being given credit for reforms that were made by the Board of Health.    Without consulting with Hyde, Gage had the letter published in a San Francisco newspaper, generating comment and controversy in the US and Hawaiʻi. People of the period consistently overlooked the role of Hawaiians themselves, among whom several had prominent roles of leadership on the island.

Later in 1889 Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson and his family arrived in Hawaii for an extended stay. He had tuberculosis, then also incurable, and was seeking some relief. Moved by Damien’s story, he became interested in the controversy about the priest and went to Molokaʻi for eight days and seven nights.   Stevenson wanted to learn more about Damien at the place where he had worked.    He spoke with residents of varying religious backgrounds to learn more about Damien’s work.    Based on his conversations and observations, he wrote an open letter to Hyde that addressed the minister’s criticisms and had it printed at his own expense.    This became the most famous account of Damien, featuring him in the role of a European aiding a benighted native people.

In his “6,000-word polemic,” Stevenson praised Damien extensively, writing to Hyde:

If that world at all remember you, on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be named a Saint, it will be in virtue of one work: your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage.

Stevenson referred to his journal entries in his letter:

“…I have set down these private passages, as you perceive, without correction; thanks to you, the public has them in their bluntness.    They are almost a list of the man’s faults, for it is rather these that I was seeking: with his virtues, with the heroic profile of his life, I and the world were already sufficiently acquainted.    I was besides a little suspicious of Catholic testimony; in no ill sense but merely because Damien’s admirers and disciples were the least likely to be critical.    I know you will be more suspicious still;   and the facts set down above were one and all collected from the lips of Protestants who had opposed the father in his life.    Yet I am strangely deceived, or they build up the image of a man, with all his weakness, essentially heroic and alive with rugged honesty, generosity and mirth.”

Canonisation

In 1977, Pope Paul VI declared Father Damien to be venerable.    On 4 June 1995, Pope John Paul II beatified him and gave him his official spiritual title of Blessed.   On 20 December 1999, Jorge Medina Estévez, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, confirmed the November 1999 decision of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to place Blessed Damien on the liturgical calendar with the rank of optional memorial.    Father Damien was canonised on 11 October 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI.    His feast day is celebrated on 10 May.    In Hawaii it is celebrated on the day of his death, 15 April.

Two miracles have been attributed to Father Damien’s posthumous intercession.    On 13 June 1992, Pope John Paul II approved the cure of a nun in France in 1895 as a miracle attributed to Venerable Damien’s intercession.    In that case, Sister Simplicia Hue began a novena to Father Damien as she lay dying of a lingering intestinal illness.    It is stated that pain and symptoms of the illness disappeared overnight.

In the second case, Audrey Toguchi, a Hawaiian woman who suffered from a rare form of cancer, had remission after having prayed at the grave of Father Damien on Molokaʻi. There was no medical explanation, as her prognosis was terminal.   In 1997, Toguchi was diagnosed with liposarcoma, a cancer that arises in fat cells.    She underwent surgery a year later and a tumor was removed but the cancer metastasized to her lungs. Her physician, Dr. Walter Chang, told her, “Nobody has ever survived this cancer. It’s going to take you.” Toguchi was surviving in 2008.

In April 2008, the Holy See accepted the two cures as evidence of Father Damien’s sanctity.    On 2 June 2008, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints at the Vatican voted to recommend raising Father Damien of Molokaʻi to sainthood.    The decree that officially notes and verifies the miracle needed for canonization was promulgated by Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal José Saraiva Martins on 3 July 2008, with the ceremony taking place in Rome and celebrations in Belgium and Hawaii.    On 21 February 2009, the Vatican announced that Father Damien would be canonised.   The ceremony took place in Rome on Rosary Sunday, 11 October 2009, in the presence of King Albert II of the Belgians and Queen Paola as well as the Belgian Prime Minister, Herman Van Rompuy, and several cabinet ministers, completing the process of canonisation.    In Washington, D.C., President Barack Obama affirmed his deep admiration for St. Damien, saying that he gave voice to voiceless and dignity to the sick.

[anastpaul]

Quote/s of the Day – 10 May

“A single ‘Blessed be God!’ when things go wrong, is of more value than a thousand acts of thanksgiving, when things are to our liking.”

“Turn yourself round like a piece of clay and say to the Lord: I am clay, and you, Lord, the potter. Make of me what you will.”

“Your life consists in drawing nearer to God. To do this you must endeavour to detach yourself from visible things and remember that in a short time they will be taken from you.”

St John of Avila – Doctor of the Church

“The Blessed Sacrament is indeed the stimulus for us all, for me as it should be for you, to forsake all worldly ambitions.”

St Damian de Veuster – St Damian of Molokai

[anastpaul]

10 May – The Memorial of St Damian de Veuster de Molokai SS.CC. Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary – Martyr of Molokai – (1840-1889) Religious Priest, Missionary – known as “Martyr of Molokai”, “Martyr of Charity”, “Apostle to the Lepers” – Patron of lepers.