Mary Adamski: Of bones, memories and the weary pilgrim

VIEW FROM THE PEW

Relics have been on my mind lately. I’m in a meditative mood not a morbid one as I think about our human tendency to hold onto a memory, a piece of history by clinging to a thing. It’s not just me reviewing my clutter, our landscape is full of memorials and museums and no one has institutionalized that better than our religion.

A few of my fellow parishioners took the opportunity for a peek at some old artifacts of the Catholic Church in Hawaii last month. They crowded into the archives of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary to see some fragments of history of St. Patrick Parish which is marking its 90th anniversary this year. The people I debriefed reported seeing photos of the olden days and chalices used by deceased Sacred Hearts fathers. I’ve seen those vessels used for Communion, ornate and simple, imagining what a precious gift each was from a family proud of a son’s vocation and sorrowful that he would leave them forever to serve in distant mission territory.

Secure in the archives are the chalice and other possessions of St. Damien de Veuster, whose service to leprosy patients banished to Kalaupapa was recognized in his own time and led to the declaration of his sainthood 10 years ago. In classic Catholic tradition, bones from the saint are held in a reliquary at the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace. His remains were taken from his Kalaupapa grave to his homeland in 1936, a decision by the Belgian government that brought anguish to the residents of Kalaupapa nearly 50 years after his death. As the sainthood cause progressed, the Sacred Hearts order returned the bones of Damien’s right hand for reburial in his grave outside his church on the remote Molokai peninsula. Finally, they ceremoniously returned a bone from his right foot as part of the October 2009 canonization celebration in Belgium and Rome.

Reunion plans sidetracked

On Oct. 11, the Honolulu cathedral was the scene of the 10th anniversary celebration of St. Damien’s canonization, with Bishop Larry Silva and Sacred Hearts fathers presiding. My plans to get there for a reunion with Hawaii folks who attended the canonization were sidetracked by a date with an orthopedic surgeon. Maybe my immediate concern for my own bones contributes to my absence from the ranks of those with a fascination with bones.

Many in the Hawaii group that went to Rome in 2009 made the descent to the catacombs beneath St. Peter’s Basilica to view the necropolis, stacked bones from ancient burials, many Christians who were persecuted and killed for their faith in the first centuries Anno Domini. I skipped that tour; no thank you to underground spaces and undone skeletons. Not even the tradition that St. Peter’s bones are buried down there could challenge my claustrophobia.

That reminds me, did you see recent news coverage about Pope Francis giving away fragments of bone believed to be of the first pope? It happened when the pope celebrated the liturgical feast day of Sts. Peter and Paul in June, joined by Eastern Orthodox Church delegates. He presented them with an ornate reliquary containing nine bone fragments which archeologists in recent times identified as probably Peter’s.

After a little tempest from some of his detractors, Pope Francis explained in September that the gift to Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, whose denomination is traced back to St. Peter’s brother Andrew, was an outreach toward reconciliation between Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches of Christianity which have been divided for 1,000 years over a few points of belief. By the way, most of the remains of St. Peter remain at the Vatican. At the time of his death at the hands of Roman Emperor Nero, surviving Christians just wanted to hide their dead safe from disrespectful treatment from their persecutors. Archeologists did not find a grandiose sarcophagus, but a funerary niche in the underground caverns with Greek graffiti saying “Peter is here.”

I wonder if all the saints’ bones were lost, would it be so terrible? We have the teachings of Jesus and the stories of the saints who lived out the Gospel and kept the faith alive down through the centuries.

With this anniversary in mind, I launched a personal archeological expedition and found a boxful of mementos of the 2009 Rome trip abandoned all these 10 years in a closet. Aha, I found the itinerary. It shows we were on more than just a walking tour; our journey leading up to the canonization clearly met the criteria for a pilgrimage. We gathered for Mass at different historic churches most days and were among the masses at a papal audience in St. Peter’s Square.

Then there was the Vatican Museum tour which I recall as more of a penitential and survival experience with no time to pause and enjoy the gazillion beautiful art and items collected for centuries. It was a fast march to avoid the hordes coming behind you. It was leaning back to gape at the Michelangelo’s famous ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, too far above to see the details, jostled by pushy tourists, cowed by the Vatican guards shouting “Silencio.”

Oh my, here is the printed program from the canonization Mass. I remember it as a chaotic day, not a spiritual experience at all. A stampede erupted when the gates were opened, nary a sign of Christian charity as hundreds of fans of the four other saints-to-be-named bulldozed their way to seek prime seating in the basilica. That ended Hawaii contingent plans to stay together. Local reporters who sought to watch for planned interaction between Pope Benedict XVI and local participants who brought gifts to the altar were lucky to find a view plane. Mine was an obstructed rear view of the pope, shared with a cluster of some Sacred Hearts fathers and brothers. We caught brief glimpses of the Damien contingent.

The towering bronze Baroque canopy over the high altar, crafted by 17th century sculpture Gian Bernini, is awesome but, for me, it overwhelmed the solemn ceremony and miracle of the Eucharist taking place at its foot.

French, Spanish and Flemish languages were used to speak of Damien during the canonization, and the pope’s declaration of sainthood was in Latin, though there was an English translation in the 190-page “Canonizzazione” program. Friends back home who watched the televised event were awed by the pageantry but, without the text we had in hand, they told me they found the event to be confusing and anticlimactic.

I’d guess that if I were there to swap memories, many fellow travelers would best remember the next morning, when we returned to the basilica for a Mass celebrated by Bishop Silva. It was at a side altar also overwhelmed by a Bernini sculpture of the Chair of Peter. We sang “How Great Thou Art” in Hawaiian, filling the vast space as resoundingly as did the massed Vatican choir’s “Alleluia” chorus the previous day.

Another memory we all cherish is the time we spent in Belgium, where thousands of Damien’s countrymen flocked to his hometown of Tremeloo for the Mass and a Belgian version of a hoolaulea. The 11 Kalaupapa patients among us were embraced as guests of honor. Everyone wanted to talk story with any of the 400-plus islanders who were identifiable by our yellow caps. Like us, his countrymen knew that Damien was a saint long before the complex church bureaucracy deemed it to be true.

Stressed and exhausted

For years, my prevailing memory of the 10-day pilgrimage and glorious canonization day was not about having a spiritual experience but about being stressed and exhausted. My fellow pilgrims were carefree as we socialized on buses, trudged miles on cobblestone streets to see yet another fountain, monument, historical site, and had grand dinners together at Italian restaurants where the wine flowed.

But at the end of the day, when they all retired to a cocktail lounge or the comfort of their beds, I had to morph into a reporter with a daily story to write. Digging through notebooks to find any faintly profound quote, seeking to describe downhome Catholics experiencing the Eternal City of Rome, with editors 10 time zones away waiting for copy. My technology limitations led me to hate the computer with which I spent those dark nights of the soul. There was no smart phone in the newspaper’s supply closet in those days. And there was no one back in the office willing to take dictation. Tears worked in the wee hours one night when the hotel desk clerk announced that the wifi was off for the night.

Burned out on the subject by the time we covered the last hurrah at Iolani Palace grounds on our return, I tucked the itineraries and programs into a box, rolled up my collection of daily newspaper stories, even tossed in a bag of purchases — luckily not the Belgian chocolates —and put the box away.

Now, along came the anniversary. I dug deep to find the artifacts of what I consider my greatest experience as a news reporter with a meaningful story to tell. In my own personal anniversary reflection, I am realizing that I was more of a pilgrim on a journey than I realized while I was letting the turmoil of reporting absorb me.

“Damien was a human being, not a parable character,” Bishop Larry Silva told a crowd in St. Anthony Chapel in Louvain, Belgium, where St. Damien is buried. “That is what it is to be a saint, to be face to face with God.”

To ponder on the life of that humble peasant priest who served far from the glitter of Rome bringing the light of Christ into the lives of outcast people, that is the spiritual experience.

In reliving the communal spirit of our pilgrimage, there’s music in my head. It echoed in Damien’s tomb, at the ancient St. Paul Outside the Walls, built over that saint’s tomb, in the noontime heat of a papal audience at St. Peter’s Square, as the 60 choir members among us and Keali ‘ika‘apunihonua Ka‘ena A‘o halau harmonized a chant by Maori composer Luke Kaa Martin:

“O ‘Oe ‘Io, e ka makua lani. O ‘Oe ‘Io, ka wai ola. O ‘Oe ‘Io, e ku‘u ola me ka mea hana i na mea apau. E ku‘u haku ka mauna ki‘eki‘e, O ‘Oe ‘Io.” (“O God in heaven, you grant living water. O God above, you are my life; it is you who made all things in the universe. You are my Lord, my highest refuge, my rock. You are my God.”)

We praised God in a language that is ancient but was new to those historic places. It was a true, thrilling, chicken-skin spiritual experience and I’ll never forget it.