ST. JOSEPHINE BAKHITA

Homily for February 8^th, 2021: St. Josephine Bakhita.

          St Josephine Bakhita, the saint whom the Church commemorates today, was born in about 1869 – she herself did not know the precise date -- to a wealthy family in Darfur, the capitol of Sudan in southern Africa. At age nine she was kidnapped 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. A kind man, he took Josephine with him when he returned to Italy in 1885. Here is some of what Pope Benedict XVI wrote about her in his 2009 encyclical “Saved by Hope.”

“Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is another Master, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her -- that he actually loved her. She was loved by none other than the supreme Master, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself been flogged and now he was waiting for her ‘at the Father's right hand’. Now she had ‘hope’-- no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: ‘I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me -- I am awaited by this Love. And so, my life is good.’

          In January 1890 Josephine was baptized, and on the same day given confirmation and First Communion by the Patriarch of Venice, later Pope St. Pius X. In 1893 she entered an order of religious Sisters, with whom she lived until her death in 1947. When she was old and bent, a bishop visiting her convent asked her what she did. “I do the same as you,” she replied. Astonished, the bishop asked her, “What’s that?” “Your Excellency,” she replied, “we both want and do the same thing: God’s will.”

Revered by all who knew her because of her gentleness, calming voice, and ever-present smile, she was declared a saint by Pope St. John Paul 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.”