Holy Rosary Catholic Church

Dear Parishioners,

St. Damien de Veuster of Molokai, SS.CC., is our featured saint for May during this Year of Faith.

He was born on January 3, 1840, in Tremelo, Belgium. He quit school at the age of thirteen to help his poor parents on their farm. At the age of nineteen, he entered the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, also known as the Picpus Fathers. During his studies for the priesthood, he prayed to St. Francis Xavier, the patron saint of missionaries, every day asking for his intercession that he would become a missionary. His prayers were answered three years later when his brother Auguste, who was also a Picpus Father, fell ill and could not be sent to the Hawaiian Islands as planned. Damien went in his brother’s place.

Damien arrived at the harbor of Honolulu on the island of Oahu on March 19, 1864. He was ordained a priest on May 21 that same year. In 1873, Bishop Louis Désiré Maigret, the vicar apostolic, asked for volunteers among priests serving in the Hawaiian Islands to go to Molokai to minister to the lepers there. Damien volunteered. When he arrived, he found the people’s morale in a deplorable state. Nevertheless, “under his leadership, basic laws were enforced, shacks became painted houses, working farms were organized, and schools were established” (Wikipedia, “Father Damien,” accessed 3 May 2013). Morale improved. “Six months after his arrival…he wrote his brother,…in Europe: ‘…I make myself a leper with the lepers to gain all to Jesus Christ.’” (Wikipedia, “Father Damien,” accessed 3 May 2013).

In 1884, Damien contracted leprosy, but set himself to finishing many projects for the people. He died on April 15, 1889, at the age of 49. He is one of two Catholic priests whose statues are on display in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol (the other is Bl. Junipero Serra). His feast day is May 10.

St. Damien, pray for us.

Fr. Ian

Dear Parishioners,

“Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things…and our neighbor as ourselves” (Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC] 1822). To say that charity is a theological virtue means it is a gift “infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life” (CCC 1813).

“Jesus makes charity the new commandment” (CCC 1823). As the Son of God, he receives the Father’s love and manifests this love to the world, ultimately by dying on the cross for the world. Thus, Jesus commands his disciples to show this same love to one another. By love will all the rest of the world know that they are his disciples:

I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (Jn 13:34-35).

As a fruit of the Holy Spirit and the summation of the law, charity willingly keeps the commandments of God and of his Christ. It commands us to love children, the poor, strangers, and even our enemies. It is selfless, generous to the end, and synonymous with all that is good. Without love, we are nothing. With love, we can grow in every virtue and come to love as God does.

The practice of the moral life as animated by charity sets us free from the slavery of sin and enables to live in the freedom of God’s children. As freeborn children of God, we no longer stand before God in fear as slaves do nor do we act as mercenaries looking for wages for the good we have done. Rather, we simply love because of him who first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:19b).

Love is the raison d’être of all human existence, its goal, and its fulfillment.

For further reading, please read CCC 1822-29. May God bless you.

Fr. Ian