By Patrick Downes | Hawaii Catholic Herald

A new musical Mass, composed in tribute to Blessed Damien, will be sung in public for the first time on his feast day, in the church where he was ordained, in a language he would have understood.

Written by island-born musician and composer Cynthia Chun Kam, the music promises to heighten the celebration of Damien Day’s culminating liturgy, 10:30 a.m., on May 10 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace.

The “Mass of Faithful Love in Honor of Damien de Veuster, SS.CC.” will be sung by a select choir of SacredHeartsAcademy students, members of the cathedral choir and a number of Sisters of the Sacred Hearts.

Bishop Larry Silva will preside at the Mass.

“I have always wanted to write a Mass,” Kam told the Hawaii Catholic Herald by phone on April 26 from her home in Miami.

The idea came after Paulie Keliikoa, a former Hawaii Catholic Schools associate superintendent and one of Kam’s high school teachers at SacredHeartsAcademy in Honolulu, came to live with her in Florida.

She was encouraged in the project by another one of her Academy teachers, Sacred Hearts Sister Helene Wood, who is now provincial superior of the Sacred Hearts Sisters in Hawaii.

Kam wanted the Mass in English. Sister Helene, however, sensing a broader potential for the work, suggested Latin so it could be “universally sung” around the world wherever Blessed Damien is commemorated.

The Latin prayers of the Mass are established, but Keliikoa offered to write an adaptation of the words of Psalm 89 for the Responsorial Psalm.

Kam and Keliikoa decided that they needed spiritual preparation to embark on such a project so, around the beginning of last year, they began to attend eucharistic adoration at their parish church once a week. Adoration is a devotion particularly fostered by Father Damien’s Sacred Hearts order.

Then, after the two friends engaged in that ageless exchange over which should come first, melody or lyric, Keliikoa relented and wrote the words for the responsorial entitled, “Forever I Will Sing.” That got the work started.

Kam proceeded with the standard parts of the Mass, composing out of order first the music for the Agnus Dei, then the Gloria, Kyrie, Sanctus and the Memorial Acclamation.

She did not rely on any existing work for inspiration or as models. This came “right out of my head,” she said.

The end result Kam described as a “very melodic Mass using more modern harmonies.”

Written for assembly and cantor accompanied by piano and organ, the traditional Latin phrases are set in “non-traditional harmonic progressions.”

However, it is “not a performance piece, but a prayer piece,” she said.

She and Keliikoa also wrote the Communion hymn, “Chosen to Love” based on the Gospel of John chapters 15 and 8.

Kam recorded the Mass with six singers and a piano at the University of Miami, where her husband Dennis Kam is head of the department of music theory and composition.

The vocals were overdubbed to effect a full choir.

“I am happy with it,” she said of the Mass, the first work she has done for church.

“It is written from the heart, through prayer,” she said.

Kam would like to do further work on the composition, calling it a “Mass in progress.”

Most of the composition is sung in one voice. She would eventually like to add additional harmony and a descant part.

A CD of the recording and the sheet music were presented at the general chapter meeting of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary earlier this year in Italy.

Cynthia Chun Kam is a 1968 graduate of SacredHeartsAcademy. She studied piano and composition at the University of Hawaii and earned a master’s degree in music at the University of Iowa.

She and Dennis, a local boy, have a 22-year-old daughter, Lauren, who is Keliikoa’s godchild.

In Miami, Cynthia teaches piano privately and accompanies the Celebration Choir at her parish of St. John Neumann.

“I am really exited,” she said about the May 10 performance at the cathedral which she plans to attend.

“You have dreams” of doing something like this, she said. To “actually have it done” will be a thrill.