Beautiful story

…about Robert Louis Stevenson’s defense of Fr. Damien.

Stevenson was, above all, an honest man. In my more Rod Serlingesque moods, I sometimes fancy that the most terrible part of the Judgment will be our final and complete loss of the power to rationalize our own sins, an overwhelming moment in which, for instance, Rev. Hyde sees, as clearly as Robert Louis Stevenson saw, his own craven and despicable sin in denouncing Fr. Damien, and must recite aloud the truth about himself and fully acknowledge it as the truth. How terrible to have to read before the Throne of God, from a man as honest as the daylight:

But, sir, when we have failed, and another has succeeded; when we have stood by, and another has stepped in; when we sit and grow bulky in our charming mansions, and a plain, uncouth peasant steps into the battle, under the eyes of God, and succours the afflicted, and consoles the dying, and is himself afflicted in his turn, and dies upon the field of honour – the battle cannot be retrieved as your unhappy irritation has suggested. It is a lost battle, and lost for ever. One thing remained to you in your defeat – some rags of common honour; and these you have made haste to cast away.

…and to no longer have the ability to blather that he is some Bohemian of no importance, but is rather a messenger of God. I pray Rev. Hyde had the sense to throw himself on the Mercy. And I fancy that the first person to rush out of the throng of the Blessed to stand him up and welcome him into the Ecstasy was Fr. Damien of Molokai.