This is the fifth in a series of Hawaii Catholic Herald columns leading up to the Oct. 11 canonization of Blessed Damien de Veuster

Trio of Damien songs flow from local singer’s pen

By Anna Weaver | Hawaii Catholic Herald

Blessed Damien de Veuster’s heroic life has motivated people in many ways. In local musician and Maryknoll High School teacher Glenn Medeiros’ case, the priest inspired him to write three songs based on the holy man’s life and work in a single day.

“I have felt a connection to Father Damien for years,” said Medeiros, 38, who teaches history at Maryknoll. It was the prompting of a school secretary there that led him to sit down at his piano one Saturday to write something in honor of the future saint.

“Normally if somebody asks me to write a song for something specific, it takes awhile,” said the singer. This time, “I just got on the piano and it just came to me.”

Medeiros said the three songs — “You Were Not Afraid,” “Alone in Paradise,” and “Father Damien” — came to him so quickly that he wrote the music and most of the lyrics at the same time. He spent the rest of the weekend laying down the musical tracks at his computer.

“How great the songs are, I don’t know,” he joked. “But I like them and I was definitely inspired.”

The Kauai-born singer in the 1980s, fresh out of high school, had a worldwide hit with “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You,” which led to a successful singing career. Today, besides his Maryknoll job, Medeiros is a part-time director of instruction at St. Joseph School in Waipahu, and performs twice a week at the Hale Koa Hotel in Waikiki.

Medeiros sang his favorite of the three Damien songs, “You Were Not Afraid,” at thanksgiving Masses on Oahu and Molokai, Feb. 21 and 22, following the announcement of Damien’s Oct. 11 canonization date. The song is written from the perspective of a dying Hansen’s disease patient who, imagining Damien before him, says, “Now I’m not afraid to go on / Now I’m not afraid to be strong.”

The other two songs were written as choral works with lyrics that have more historical detail from Father Damien’s life that Medeiros researched, something he as a history teacher enjoyed doing.

He said that the up-tempo “Alone in Paradise,” speaks of the irony of Hansen’s disease sufferers being “in such a beautiful, heavenly place, but yet were alone.”

A sample lyric: “There at Moloka‘i in Kalaupapa (valley he) / He built the lost and the lonely a house (for families) / Even in their dying days.”

“Father Damien” talks about the royal honor that Damien received from King Kalakaua, his working with Mother Marianne Cope, and how he inspired Mahatma Gandhi. Medeiros arranged the song with “mostly female and male voices singing interwoven melodies.”

Medeiros hopes to be a part of the local canonization celebrations in October, possibly including performances of his three Damien songs.

“I’m just hoping that people have the chance to hear them and hopefully be touched by them and not run away because they sound horrible,” he said.

ON SALE

De Veuster by D. Varez

You can now buy a reproduction of “The Canonization of Damien” by Big Island artist Dietrich Varez.

Varez gave Bishop Larry Silva a print of the work earlier this year along with permission to use it in any way to celebrate Father Damien’s elevation to sainthood this year.

The diocese is selling the 11 by 14 inch commercially printed copy of the artwork through the Hawaii Catholic Herald for $10, which covers postage and handling. The image, which depicts the Belgian priest in saintly glory with a maile halo held over his head by Hawaiian angels, is printed in dark brown ink on stiff light brown paper. (To order, use the coupon on page 11)

Proceeds from the sale of the reproduction will help pay for expenses related to the event. Those expenses include travel costs for Kalaupapa patients to the Oct. 11 canonization in Rome and activities surrounding the return of a relic of Father Damien to Hawaii.

Varez, who lives and works in Volcano, Hawaii, is a prolific artist who depicts Hawaiian themes through the primary medium of linoleum block printing, although he also paints. He has created many works with Damien de Veuster and Blessed Marianne Cope, another sainthood candidate, as the subjects.

Two of them, framed in koa, hang in Bishop Silva’s office. Two large oil paintings, one of Blessed Damien, one of Blessed Marianne, flank the sanctuary of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu.

His Damien and Marianne images have even decorated Reyn-Spooner aloha shirts and muumuus.

Varez is a Lutheran but said in a Herald interview a few years ago that he is drawn to these two Catholic religious figures because of their place in island history.

“I see them very much a part of what Hawaii was and still is,” he said. “These are very important people.”

Glenn Medeiros sings “You Were Not Afraid,” a song about Blessed Damien, in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace on Feb. 21 during the Mass of Thanksgiving for the announcement of the canonization date.