Tree planted by saint continues his good works

[Holly3278]

Honolulu, Hawaii, Nov 20, 2010 / 01:10 pm (CNA).- With its wood, the tree honors the foot that pushed the shovel that planted it. Like many stories in Hawaii, the story of the box holding St. Damien’s relic, fragments of the saint’s foot bone, unfolds in many wonderful directions.

Telling it last week, with enthusiasm by phone from Makawao, Maui, was Edwin Ferreira.
It starts with a troupe of trees, seven or eight monkeypods that Father Damien planted to provide shade near the church he built in the late 1800s in Kaluaaha, Molokai.
That’s how Ferreira pictured it. “Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Church is in a hot and dry area,” he said.

A hundred years later, sometime in the 1980s, lightning struck one of the trees, killing it. It had to be cut down so it would not fall and damage the church.

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This is so cool!

Saint Damien, pray for us. Amen.

I’m not sure where I read it at but before Mass today I was reading through some of the readings in the Missalette and I think one of the Gospels was the story about the 10 lepers. In case you didn’t know, Saint Damien was a missionary priest who volunteered to go to Molokai, Hawaii, a leper colony to minister to them. He finally died of leprosy himself.

On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices and said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then said Jesus, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”
(Luke 17:11-19 RSV)