By Patrick Downes | Hawaii Catholic Herald

A light drizzle wafted down from NuuanuValley on the morning of May 10 and into the open rotunda of the State Capitol where dozens of plaid-skirted and polo-shirted Catholic school children moved around in teacher-led flocks. Handfuls of nuns and priests in habit mingled with a larger number of lay people and

Photos by Anna Weaver Robert Asing drapes leis over the shoulders of the statue of Blessed Damien at the state capitol at the Damien Day celebration, May 10.

onlookers. A veteran actor, dressed as a mature Father Damien de Veuster in cassock and hat stood quietly off to the side. A high school band set up in the corner.

It was Damien Day at the capitol.

This year’s gathering, assembled behind the dark brown bronze form of the holy man that juts up in the center of the open space in front of the building like a short blocky obelisk, promised a larger and livelier observance than those of recent years.

A two-year Hawaii bishop with a personal fervor for Blessed Damien, expectations of Damien’s canonization, and an invigorated Sacred Hearts Congregation were perhaps the reasons.

The assembly of several hundred, young and old, closed into a thick semi-circle facing the back of the statue as Sacred Hearts Father Lane Akiona gave his opening remarks.

Seated front and center were two of the beatified priest’s fellow countrymen, Sacred Hearts Fathers Albert Miechielsen and Joseph Hendriks, now in their 80s, who, like Damien, emerged from Belgian farm stock to be ordained priests and serve as missionaries in Hawaii.

In his invocation, Bishop Larry Silva asked God’s blessing on all present, and particularly the young people, so that they may follow Damien’s example of service.

“Decades ago, you touched the heart of a young man,” he prayed. “Lord, we ask your blessing upon all of us that we will become blessed saints ourselves…”

The program proceeded with actor Terence Knapp performing a powerful excerpt from the Aldyth Morris’ celebrated one-man play, “Damien,” eight young women from Sacred Hearts Academy dancing a hula to “Hea ka Haku,” the winner of the Damien Day student essay contest reading her composition (see page 15), and the sweet-voiced St. Francis School choir singing a song honoring Blessed Marianne Cope.

Attention was then directed to the statue as priests, sisters, students and others placed leis, wreaths and bouquets of flowers on and around it.

Bishop Larry Silva stands in the rotunda of the capitol with Father Joseph Hendriks, center, and Father Albert Miechielsen.

Perched on the top rung of a ladder propped up against the statue’s back, Robert Asing draped around the statue’s neck a giant haku lei of bougainvillea made by the Sacred Hearts Sisters and single strands of plumeria. Damien’s broad-rimmed clerical hat was already adorned by a flower-wreath made by Asing’s wife Novelene.

After prayers and acknowledgments, the program ended with the DamienMemorialSchool band, led by Kent Sato, playing a rendition of “Damien the Blessed.”

The crowd then found its way from the capitol to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace two blocks away on Bishop Street for the feast day Mass. The music-laden liturgy introduced for the first time the “Mass of Faithful Love in Honor of Damien de Veuster, SS.CC.,” written by island-born musician and composer Cynthia Chun Kam.

The Mass used the universal language of Latin, except for a few Scripture-based numbers with English lyrics written by Paulie Keliikoa, a former Hawaii Catholic educator.

Kam’s joyful melodies leapt through the Gloria and Sanctus and turned pensive at the Agnus Dei. She also contributed the Offertory song, “Chosen to Love,” the “Memorial Acclamation” and the “Great Amen.”

The church was packed, both upstairs and down, mostly with school children. Bishop Silva presided and about 15 priests concelebrated.

Sacred Hearts Sister Mary Dolorine Pires’ meditative recitation of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans on suffering and sacrificial death gave deeper meaning to Damien’s courageous spirit.

A Catholic school student prays during the Damien Day Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace following the events at the capitol.

The bishop, in his homily, wove images of sheep and shepherd with the acts of consuming and being consumed. He said that Jesus “turned the world upside down” when the Shepherd offered himself as eucharistic food for his sheep.

He pushed the metaphor further with the example of Blessed Damien “allowing himself to be consumed” by the people he served and “consumed by the disease that consumed them.”

“We are all sheep and we are all shepherds,” the bishop then said. “We are called to be consumed by those whom we serve.”

May 10 is the same day that, 134 years ago, a 33-year-old Father Damien de Veuster stepped off a boat and onto the rocky shore of Kalawao on Molokai’s desolate Kalaupapa peninsula to embrace a community doomed by a disfiguring disease and a government’s decree.

It is the same day the Catholic Church chose, upon his beatification, to be his feast day.