Saint Damien Roots Firm In Church Sapling
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Del.icio.usWhen Father Damien was canonized last fall, Sacred Hearts Academy celebrated its unique connection to the priest with a Mass that included the presentation of a pandanus sapling from Kalawao settlement.
“This was a sapling from the tree that he laid under after he got leprosy,” explained principal Betty White.“I guess the scent of the disease was too strong for a cabin or a house,so he slept under that tree. Isn’t that amazing?”
Wailani Robins and her daughter Kaulalani, now an academy senior brought the young hala tree back from Kalaupapa National Historical Park last spring.
“My family has a history in Kalaupapa,“Robins said.“My grandfather was a housekeeper at the lighthouse, so my father spent a lot of time there. I had always wanted to take my daughter - to show her the stories she’d heard from her papa, to actually show her these places we’d been telling her about and the lighthouse he grew up in - but you couldn’t go down there until you were 16.”
So when Kaulalani’s Hawaiian language class took a field trip to the Molokai settlement, Robins accompanied them. As fate would have it, they happened upon the very church her father used as a refuge. “There were certain areas you couldn’t go into,” she explained, “but my father, being a young boy and kolohe, he would ride his horse all over the place, and these people (the patients) would welcome him into their homes to eat with them.
“He would stop at St. Philomena’s Church,tie up his horse, take a nap in the church, then ride back home to the lighthouse.”
When she took Kaulalani inside that day in 2009, they met with painters who happened to be working over the very spot where Robins’father used to rest his head. The women shared the family story, and Kaulalani got to paint a small area herself.
Back outside, talking under the hala tree, Robins said they learned from their ranger guide that it is the only such tree on the whole island. The man then reached down, dug up one of the sprouts and gave it to them.
Finding the right place to plant, however, was “a big kuleana,” she admitted, but they prayed and concluded that the school would be a good choice.
Growing in a container for months, the sapling will be planted April 15 in the school courtyard - the date the beloved priest died.
“Father Damien just epitomizes what Sacred Hearts should stand for,what our girls should stand for, as far as service and giving of that service to the community,“White said.
Saint Louis School also will plant a sapling that sprouted from the same root, Robins added.”(The sapling) was a twin; and since they’re brother-sister schools, we thought how nice that would be.
“The intent is to kind of pass on that legacy, to be mindful of service, which is what St. Damien is all about ... Then it will be complete - it will have come full circle.”
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