Holy Unmercenaries, Batman

This has to be beyond mere coincidence.
 While in Malaysia, I met a very intriguing and inspirational man, Father Cosmas Lee, pastor of St. Simon Catholic Church in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. See my Easter Sunday post for more on that encounter.


Father Cosmas, whom I reckon to be about my age, is of 100% Chinese ancestry, born and raised in Malaysia. He attended seminary in Rome and London before returning to his native land for ordination. He also studied at U.C. Berkley. His specialty is liturgy.


You would know none of this from meeting Father Lee personally. Like many men of breadth and depth and faith, he is most humble in regard to self, yet powerful in projecting his inner harmony with life and with God. How else could one relatively slight man move an entire congregation to proclaim "Alleluia" at the tops of their voices at the end of an Easter Mass at the end of a long afternoon? If you believe in the Holy Spirit, you have to believe He exists in this man. And even if you don't believe in the Holy Spirit, just in meeting this man you would surely appreciate his infectious other-wordly personal spirit.

I thought it rather clever that such a spiritual man who speaks so eloquently and  who warmly welcomes foreigners "home" to his house of worship would bear a cosmic first name. But then I noticed the spelling of that name is "Cosmas" not "Cosmos." From somewhere in the cobwebs of my Catholic school upbringing I recalled a recurring reference to "Sts. Cosmas and Damian." [I promise a noteworthy prize to the first reader who can cite the actual source of said recurring petition.]


My resultant research on St. Cosmas and his twin brother, St. Damian, forms the basis for my "more than mere coincidence" opening sentence. These two Arabian-born Christian martyrs, who died around 287 A.D., practiced the art of healing in the Roman port of Syria. So they were physicians, and indeed the Church regards them as patron saints of physicians, surgeons, and dentists. One particularly miraculous healing involved the grafting of the black leg of a deceased Ethiopian to replace the ulcerated leg of a white patient. This makes another coincidence: Just about seven years ago I witnessed an impressive NIH research presentation demonstrating that medical science is very close to accomplishing full limb transplants.


But there is an even more miraculous aspect of the lives of Sts. Cosmas and Damian: They accepted no payment for their services. Nihil. Zilch. Nada. Tipota. No, they were not independently wealthy nor employed by an HMO. In fact, the Eastern rite churches venerate them as Άγιοι Ανάργυροι, meaning "without silver" or "Holy Unmercenaries." Their selfless generosity, it is said, led many to the Christian faith. And, the Roman government of the time had no need to reform its healthcare system by passing sweeping new laws.


So on an Easter Sunday half-way around the world from his childhood home, a U.S. Navy doctor meets a Chinese/Malaysian holy man who inspires him to research the lives of two saints, and that research leads him to reflect on the pending modern miracle of full limb transplants and the mercenary root cause for sweeping healthcare reform in his native land, not to mention the core lesson of the Holy Unmercenaries: the calling to heal purely from the love of God and man, thus observing Jesus' command: "Freely have you received, freely give."


That has to be beyond mere coincidence.