The Priest Who Became Salt on Molokai

In 1873, a thirty-three-year-old Belgian priest named Damien de Veuster stepped off a cargo ship onto the rocky shore of Kalaupapa, a remote peninsula on Molokai where the Hawaiian government had banished hundreds of people suffering from leprosy. No one was forced to go. Damien volunteered.

What he found was a place the world had abandoned. The sick lay in makeshift shelters without clean water or medicine. Lawlessness ruled. Damien did not retreat. He built cottages with his own hands, bandaged open wounds, constructed a water system, and organized farms. He ate with those others refused to touch. He began every sermon the same way: "We lepers."

For sixteen years, Damien preserved dignity where decay had set in. He brought order where there was chaos, hope where there was despair. He was salt — resisting the rot of neglect and indifference. He was light — visible on that isolated cliff for every passing ship to see. When he finally contracted leprosy himself in 1885, he did not leave. He stayed until his death in 1889, his body bearing the cost of a life poured out.

Jesus told His followers that salt must not lose its savor and light must not be hidden. Damien understood that the law of God is fulfilled not in careful self-preservation but in costly, visible love — the kind that walks straight into the wound of the world and refuses to look away.