Bravo Darlene Dela Cruz for your excellent report on the church’s sesquicentennial celebration of Father Damien de Veuster’s arrival Ein Honolulu on March 19, 1864.
As the perfect sacrifice of Christ, holy Mass, we know, is the sacramental presence of the Nazarene’s sacrifice of the Cross. In this same connection, what John Bannister Tabb celebrates in his poem “Father Damien” is this Belgian priest’s self-sacrifice at Kalaupapa — in union with the Eucharistic Christ.
Of Father Damien, Father Tabb writes: “O God, the cleanest offering / Of tainted earth below, / Unblushing to thy feet we bring / A leper white as snow.”
John F. Maguire
San Francisco