We Lepers" — Father Damien's Chosen Kinship

In 1873, a thirty-three-year-old Belgian priest named Father Damien de Veuster stepped off a boat onto the rocky shore of Molokai, Hawaii. The island's Kalaupapa peninsula was a government-enforced leper colony — a place where eight hundred men, women, and children lived in exile, abandoned by nearly everyone they had ever loved.

Damien chose to stay. He bandaged ulcerated wounds without gloves. He built coffins, dug graves, and shared meals with people the world had declared untouchable. He constructed houses, a church, and an orphanage. For twelve years he labored among them, calling them his parishioners.

Then one Sunday morning in 1885, Damien stood before his congregation and began his homily with two words that changed everything: "We lepers." He had contracted the disease himself. The people wept — not from pity, but from the overwhelming recognition that their priest now shared fully in their suffering. He was no longer simply among them. He was one of them.

This is what the writer of Hebrews wants us to understand about Jesus. He did not help humanity from a safe distance. He "shared in their humanity" and "was made like them, fully human in every way" so that He could become a merciful and faithful High Priest. He entered our skin, bore our grief, and faced our temptations — not because He had to, but because love demanded it. He stands before the Father and says, in effect, "We brothers. We sisters."