Editorial: Love of a martyr

Sydney
30 June 2002

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Editorial: Love of a martyr

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Editorial: Love of a martyr

It’s called ‘agape’ – the ability to love all. A Greek word adapted to Christian usage, agape is charitable love. It is considered the highest form of love.

It is also, perhaps, the most difficult, which is why it is not often witnessed. But one man, well known to older Catholics and currently being introduced to their younger brethren via the big screen, was this sacrificial love incarnate. He was Fr Damien, the ‘leper priest’.

The film, Molokai: The story of Father Damien, tells how the young Belgian priest took up his ministry to the lepers on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, despite knowing that in the fulness of time he, too, must contract the disfiguring disease.

Leprosy (now known as Hansen’s Disease) was viewed for centuries with as much fear and abhorrence as AIDS is today. That didn’t stop Fr Damien (see Fr Damien, missionary hero of Molokai, CW 16/6, and Fr Damien role is ‘uplifting’ on page 5 of this issue).

What is most interesting is the nature of his love for those he ministered to and cared for and the relevance this has for us in how we might care for today’s ‘lepers’. Fr Damien’s love was not a passive love. He was not a sook, a soppy saint who never entertained bad thoughts or contemplated temptation. He was a fighter, taking on all comers for the sake of his dying charges so that they might live and die in dignity. Advocates of euthanasia take note.

And when his superiors and government authorities would not give him what was needed, he cranked up the pressure, going over their heads to Princess Liliukalani. He also used the European press to embarrass them into helping him.

Fr Damien’s robust love of his charges and his persistent championing of their cause ended in a martyrdom that teaches us as valuable a lesson today as it did 150 years ago.

There are still lepers in our midst. David Wenham, who portrays the good priest in the film, says in our interview on page 5 that something not dissimilar to the casting out of lepers is happening in Australia today in respect of refugees.

But perhaps the most powerful message encapsulated in the life of Fr Damien is that martyrdom takes many forms and can last as long as 16 years.

It is not always a matter of being killed for one’s faith. Martyrdom can also take the form of sacrificial love and be expressed in many small acts.

This persistent giving of Fr Damien in big and small ways, even when the going got tough, is an important part of his message and of his example … that and the fact that he, like us, was human and vulnerable and quite imperfect, too.