Today’s StoryMaker of the Past traveled halfway around the world to serve not famous or important people, but some of the sickest and most forgotten people. God used a man named Damien to care for his most lonely children, reminding us that God never forgets us and never leaves us alone.
Father Damien was born on January 3, 1840, in Tremelo, Belgium. He had six older brothers and sisters. At age 18, he joined the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a mission group that sent people all over the world to tell God’s story to others. Father Damien was sent to the Hawaii Islands in 1863.
In the mid-1800s leprosy (now called Hansen’s disease) broke out in Hawaii. At that time, very little was understood about this disease that caused large sores all over the body, blindness, losing the ability to walk and talk, and nerve damage that made it impossible to feel anything. There was no cure and people were very afraid of getting it. The government in Hawaii decided to isolate the sick from the rest of the population to prevent the spread of the disease. So, they opened isolation settlements in small towns, far from other people.
Father Damien heard about these lonely and sick people and volunteered to work at a leprosy colony in the town of Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai. Most of the people there were separated from their families and friends and lived far away from home. People were afraid of them and their disease. But, upon his arrival, Father Damien said, “I am as one who will be a father to you and who loves you so much that he does not hesitate to become one of you; to live and die with you.”
In the sixteen years he served at Kalaupapa, Father Damien only had helpers for six of those years. On his own, he taught everyone God’s story, helped build houses, roads, bridges, and hospitals. He dressed wounds, built a reservoir, made coffins, dug graves, and visited the cemeteries. In 1884, Father Damien contracted Hansen’s disease, but continued to serve his community for five more years. Eventually, in 1889, he died at Kalaupapa of the illness.
God made Damien his StoryMaker throughout his work with the least healthy and most overlooked among us. But God did not end the story in Hawaii. Because of Damien’s work with these fellow sufferers, many people outside of Hawaii learned how God loves all of his children and cares about the sick and the lonely. Damien was named the patron saint of the Dioceses of Honolulu and Hawaii. The date of his death, April 15, is a minor holiday in Hawaii. And in Belgium, halfway around the world, many churches have statues to remember this man who gave up his health and ultimately his life to love people that others had forgotten.
