God’s love and God’s commandments – that is what it is all about. In today’s very short Gospel reading, Jesus tells us that he loves us and that we are to remain in his love. He asks us to keep his Father’s commandments. Love and the law of God go hand and hand. His commandments help us to better love him and to better love our brothers and sisters.
We are still hearing the discussion about trying to bring God’s word to the Gentiles in our reading today from the Acts of the Apostles. You could say that the Gentiles were considered lepers and outcastes in the eyes of the Jews of Jesus’ day. We celebrate the saint Father Damien today. Damien is a saint who really captures the imagination of a lot of people. He comes from a very different place and time from our modern world. Growing up in Belgium in the middle of the nineteenth century, and having to quit school in order to work at his family’s farm, Joseph de Veuster later joined his brother in the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. His brother got sick and was unable to undertake a missionary voyage to Hawaii, so Joseph took his place. He took the name of Damien when he became a priest after the martyr of the 4th century. Damien then volunteered to become a missionary on the leper colony on the island of Moloka’i. My friend Kathy Bizzarri from St Richard has a very strong devotion to Father Damien. God’s love motivated Father Damien’s work, and it speaks to us so strongly today across time and history. We give thanks to Father Damien and the other examples of faith who give us hope and who inspire our imaginations along our journey of faith.
This is a photo of an embroidery made
by Kathy Bizzarri of St Richard parish
in Jackson, Mississippi. It was done
by her embroidery machine from a
photo of Father Damien that she
scanned. It is hanging in my office.
I will cherish it always.
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