Homily for Saturday July 19, 2014. Mt. 12:14-21.
Jesus “warned
them not to make him known.” Why? Jesus did not want celebrity status, based on
his ability to heal people and perform the other miracles we read about in the
gospels. Mostly Jesus worked quietly. The gospel reading we have just heard
describes Jesus’ manner of work in language taken from the Prophet Isaiah.
“He will not
contend or cry out,” Isaiah writes. “A bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering
wick he will not quench.” In his 2007 Encyclical on hope, Spe salvi, Pope Benedict XVI tells the story of a woman who was
like Isaiah’s bruised reed and smoldering wick, Josephine Bakhita. Born in
about 1869 to a wealthy family in the Sudan,
she was kidnapped at age 9 and sold and re-sold in the slave market in Darfur. Beaten and flogged by her masters so often that
she had 144 scars on her body, she came finally into the possession of the
Italian consul in the Sudan.
He took Josephine with him when he returned to Italy in 1885. There Josephine heard
about a master who was unlike any other: not only just and kind, but one who
actually loved her. He too had been flogged. He was waiting for her at the
Father’s right hand.
In January
1890 Josephine was baptized, and on the same day given Confirmation and First
Communion by the Patriarch of Venice, later the Pope, St.
Pius X. In 1893 she entered the Italian Canossian Sisters, with whom she lived
until her death in 1947. Revered by all who knew her because of her gentleness,
calming voice, and ever present smile, she was declared a saint by St. John
Paul II in 2000.
Asked once, "What would you do,
if you were to meet your captors?" Josephine responded: "If I were to
meet those who kidnapped me, and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and
kiss their hands. For, if these things had not happened, I would not have been
a Christian and a religious Sister today.” Because the Church has declared her
a saint, we can pray: “St. Josephine Bakhita, Pray for us.”
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