Witness
A parishioner of St Patrick's Blacktown gives a first-hand account of a deeply spiritual experience...
“REJECTED FOR THE REJECTED, A LEPER FOR THE LEPERS”
By Peter Baker
I had the privilege of visiting the last remaining leper colony in the United States of America over Easter: Kalaupapa on the Hawaiian island of Molokai.
What is intriguing about the colony is its isolation and its two beautiful churches. Even today, the only way for a visitor to get into the colony is by hiking or riding a mule down the steepest sea cliffs in the world, or flying in on a small aircraft. In 1865, the Hawaiian authorities found the massive volcanic cliffs and the pounding Pacific seas the perfect prison for the lepers. It was not until 1969 that the patients were allowed to leave.
Many of you will know that a Sacred Heart priest, Father Damien (Saint Damien since October 2009) gave his life to the service of the lepers in the 19th century ultimately dying from the disease. Saint Damien was not a meek mystic. He was a man of action and drive, building underground water reservoirs, roads, graveyards, stone fences and churches on several Hawaiian islands; yet, he was a man of great humbleness and love who often sought forgiveness from those people he had hurt because of his sometimes difficult nature.
The island of Molokai is a short distance across a calm strait from another island, Maui. Maui is the preserve of Mega American tourist resorts which lay claim to many of the beautiful beaches lining Maui’s shores. Whilst in Maui I met an American tourist on a beach. When I pointed to the cloud covered island of Molokai, across the water, and mentioned I was going to visit the home of the last 17 leprosy patients, she looked at me incredulously: “My family have been spending vacations here for years, and no one told us. Leprosy? You mean like in ‘Ben Hur’?”
The point is that there is no reference in any of the tourist brochures scattered in Maui hotel lobbies or on airport counters that the leper (now Hansen Disease) colony even exists. Like the 19th century administrators before them, the tourism movers and shakers have managed to move it from the consciousness of the majority.
Why is this so? The answer I believe lies with our world’s desire to avoid suffering, to live a pain free, perfect, beautiful life. The suffering of lepers, AIDS sufferers, the homeless etc get in the way of this humanistic desire.
This is where Christ’s new commandment in the Gospel – to “love one another just as I have loved you” – is so radical a departure from this desire. Christ is challenging me to take on completely and utterly the suffering of others. Because that is what His love was, and is, for us.
I also believe that this challenge in this Gospel is precisely the reason why Christians stepped onto the Kalaupapa peninsular when no one else was interested.. Saint Damien and his successors on Molakai are a perfect example to me of Christ’s love in action.