A life given to others

Many of us have heard of Father Damien, famous for his work with those with leprosy, but Sister Marianne Cope, at the age of 45 likewise volunteered for the Hawaiian mission at Molokai. She served girls and women with leprosy, emphasizing “pride and fun” and dignity in the colony. Soon after her death, a local woman wrote in the Honolulu Advertiser that she was “a woman [who devoted] every hour of 30 years to the mothering of people isolated by law from the rest of the world. She risked her own life in all that time, faced everything with unflinching courage, and smiled sweetly through it all.” Who can you help today, right at home, to see beyond the harshness of life?