I am deeply impressed through my further reading with his heritage. This brave, inspired man of God who, in complete poverty and isolation, cared for dying lepers until he himself became a leper and died an awful death from leprosy. At some stage this makes me understand something more about the incarnation.
Damien became one of the great religious figures of our time – I now realize. He is being mentioned together with such inspiring figures like Mother Theresa. Elected by Belgians as the greatest of their countrymen. A humble, leper priest who loved his lepers... A modern mystic.
His life inspired artist of format to paint him. In the church, as I walked out, my eye catches a tapistry, made in 1937 by one of the prestigious ateliers in Belgium from a sketch by Marcel Laforêt. It is called, I read much later, “The triumph of Father Damien.” It represents scenes from his life based on photo’s.
It was produced in soft colours, wonderfully light and bright. You see it as you leave the church, hanging there, almost unobtrusivley. It is not very big, but the pilgrim will not miss it. Its image lingers on, enters you innermost being and stays with you for ever. It brings closure, gives meaning, rounds off.
Look at the whole scene:
I take these photo’s. But, on closer inspection, you notice the beautiful scene of his arrival as a young priest at the colony. The neat young man with a cross and a Bible.
But it is the centre of the image that draws the eye: He sits there, in a white cloak, with a child in his hand. Almost Pieta-like. Around him there are many faces of children.
It is only when you look closer, that you notice the leper wounds on all their faces:
Our of that misery, beauty is born. In the quiet garden on that silent Sunday morning, the resurrected Christ is found, with the wounds of the cross on his hands.
This image of Damien in the middle in turn inspired other artists. It moved them to recreate the moving power of what is being communicated here. There is, for example, a glass window in a church in Ukkel based on it. Inspiration inspires!
Out of leprosy, out of the death of this man of simplicity and compassion, beauty is created and recreated. The inner power of what was present in his life, spirals long after his death.
The heart of humanity recognizes a good person. It wants to celebrate and admire such beauty. We praise the brave life of someone who gave up everything for the sake of others.
But, surely, this is what the Gospel is all about: God so loved the world... that God gave up the most precious, gave up life, unique life. And created new life. And since then, we too, driven by the beauty of divine life, in conformity to Christ, give up the most precious, in order to love so deeply. You will do greater things.
This is the divine. Evil will never speak the last word. Death will be transformed into what is pure and good, death will be replaced by life.
Finally, a sketch by Sir Edward Clifford of Damien - he visited Damien on the island and drew this though he only knew him as a leper!
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