Hands and Hearts · Week 2 · Grades 9–12
Guided Notes: St. Damien of Molokai
- Name
- Date
- Class
Follow along as your teacher presents. Fill in each section when its slide is on the screen.
Disease, fear and the law
In the nineteenth century, diseases carried by foreign ships devastated the Native Hawaiian population. Leprosy, now called blank 1, spread in those same decades. It was incurable and widely believed to be highly contagious.
In 1865, under King Kamehameha V, the Kingdom of Hawaii passed a law to isolate those diagnosed. From 1866 they were shipped to the blank 2 peninsula on Molokai, walled off by some of the highest sea cliffs in the world.
Over roughly a century, about eight thousand people were sent there, most of them Native Hawaiians. Hawaii’s isolation law was not lifted until blank 3, years after effective drugs became available.
A volunteer who stayed
Jozef De Veuster, born in blank 4 to a farming family in Tremelo, Belgium, joined the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary as Brother Damien. In 1863 his brother, also in the congregation, fell ill before sailing for the Hawaiian mission. Damien asked to replace him.
Ordained in blank 5 in 1864, he worked nine years in rural districts of the island of Hawaii. In 1873 Bishop Louis Maigret asked for priests to serve Kalaupapa in rotation. Damien went first, on May 10, and then asked to remain permanently.
Damien and Kalaupapa
Write what happened in each year.
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1840 | Write your answer |
| 1864 | Write your answer |
| 1865 | Write your answer |
| 1873 | Write your answer |
| 1880s | Write your answer |
| 1888 | Write your answer |
| 1889 | Write your answer |
| 2009 | Write your answer |
Presence as theology
Damien ate with the residents, dressed ulcers with his own hands and anointed the dying. With the residents he built houses, a water system, an enlarged church, orphanages and a cemetery, and he badgered the blank 6 of Health for supplies.
Catholics see in this a picture of the blank 7: God does not save from a distance but takes on our flesh and our suffering. Damien’s nearness told people what the law denied, that each of them bore the image of God.
He was not the only one. Native Hawaiian blank 8, called kōkua, had already gone into exile voluntarily to care for those they loved.
Apply it
Which response best matches Damien’s way of serving? Circle one.
- A Raising money online for a cause you never see up close
- B Sharing the daily life of the people you are trying to help
- C Designing a program for a community without consulting it
- D Posting about an injustice so that others will take action
Why is that the right answer?
Criticized, defended, canonized
Damien could be blunt and blank 9, and he clashed with officials and at times with his own superiors. After his death in 1889, a Honolulu minister, Charles McEwen Hyde, attacked his character in a letter that was printed in newspapers.
The Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson, who had visited Kalaupapa shortly after Damien’s death, answered with a famous open letter in 1890. He granted that Damien was rough and blank 10, and argued that this made his sacrifice more admirable, not less.
Damien’s body was moved to blank 11, Belgium, in 1936. In 1995 a relic of his right hand was returned to his original grave at Kalaupapa.
Apply it
Hansen’s disease is now curable and hard to catch, yet stigma persists. What does that suggest? Circle one.
- A Medical facts alone do not undo fear of people seen as unclean
- B The cure must be less effective than doctors publicly claim
- C Isolation laws are still needed wherever the disease appears
- D Stigma fades on its own once a generation has passed away
Why is that the right answer?
Take a side
Damien gave up ordinary precautions in order to live as one of the people he served, and it likely cost him his life. Does real solidarity require sharing the risk, or should a helper protect himself so he can keep helping?
My side: ☐ Solidarity means sharing the risk ☐ A helper should protect himself
- The people of Kalaupapa had been told they were untouchable. What would gloves and distance have said to them?
- A dead helper helps no one. Mother Marianne Cope kept strict hygiene, served thirty years there and never caught the disease.
- Is there a difference between accepting a risk for love and being careless with a life God gave you?
- Today we can support a cause from a screen at no cost. When is that enough, and when is it a way to avoid showing up?
My strongest reason, with evidence from the slides:
The best argument for the other side, and my response:
Let us pray
Lord Jesus, you became one of us and drew near to those the world cast out.
Give us the courage to close the distance that fear and comfort create.
Let us honor your image in every person, in person and online.
St. Damien of Molokai, pray for us.
Amen.
My own prayer or intention:
Go and draw near
St. Damien’s feast is May 10, the anniversary of his arrival at Kalaupapa. Hawaii chose him as one of its two statues in the United States Capitol.
One thing I learned today:
One question I still have:
How could the example of St. Damien of Molokai shape the way I live, online and offline?
Challenge: Identify one “Kalaupapa” in your world: a person or group that is avoided, in the hallway or online. This week, spend real time there, and afterward write three sentences on what it cost you.