St. Josephine Bakhita: Touched, Healed, Fortunate

St. Josephine Bakhita  (1869-1947)

(5th Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year B; This homily was given on 4 & 5 February, 2012 at Holy Apostles Church in Cranston, R.I.  See Job 7:1-7 and Mark 1:29-39)

I would like to ask you a very personal question:

What happened to you when you gathered together, probably with your family and their closest friends—on the day you were baptized? 

There is a good chance that if you were baptized as an infant you will not remember what happened to you on that day.  If you were someone who went through the adult catechumenate, participating in classes for the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) then you probably do remember.

Nonetheless, whether we remember it or not, all of us are familiar with what our faith teaches us about baptism.  We know that on the day of our baptism our parents and godparents made the sign of the cross on our foreheads; that the priest or deacon poured water over our heads (or perhaps we were even fully immersed in that water) and the prayer of the Church was offered, in which Christ Himself, through His sacred minister, baptizes in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

On the day of our baptism Christ touched us, physically and spiritually.  We were touched by Him, healed of Original Sin and given new life in the Holy Spirit.  What a remarkable and amazing thing happened to us on that day!

There is a beautiful image for what happens at baptism in our Gospel this weekend.  St. Mark relates how Peter’s mother-in-law lay sick in bed with a fever.  In the time of Jesus, it would not be unusual for a person to die if the fever was severe.  Perhaps for that very reason St. Mark tells us that they brought Jesus to the woman “immediately.”  The sickness must have been serious indeed.  Then Christ did the most tender and loving thing:

He approached, grasped her hand, and helped her up.”

—Mark 1:31

He touched her, and she was healed.  She then began to serve those around her, filled with gratitude and self-giving love.  Such is the healing and life-giving encounter we experience in the Sacrament of Baptism.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that, “in the sacraments Christ continues to ‘touch’ us in order to heal us” (CCC, #1504). 

That is what happened on the day of our baptism.  Christ touched us in order to heal us.  On the day we received the Sacrament of Confirmation, when the bishop made the sign of the cross on our foreheads with sacred chrism and prayed over us for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we were touched by Christ, healed and made whole.  That is what happens each time we encounter Christ in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.  “In the sacraments Christ continues to ‘touch’ us in order to heal us” (CCC, #1504). 

How desperately we need and long for that touch and that healing; in a world broken by sin and so often tainted by evil, suffering and pain, how we yearn and long to be touched by Christ and to be healed.

There is a powerful story about a woman named Josephine Bakhita.  She grew up in Sudan, one of the largest countries in Africa, in a region called Darfur.  You do not need to be an expert in current events to know that Darfur is one of the most dangerous places on earth, particularly for women.  The atrocities committed against women and men, and the violence in Darfur spreading to the point of genocide, provoked a crisis that has cried out for international intervention in recent years (in 2004, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powel referred to Darfur as the worse humanitarian crisis of the 21^st century).  For Josephine Bakhita, growing up in late 19^th century Sudan was no less dangerous.

She was born in 1869 to loving parents and had a peaceful, happy life with her family.   But at the age of nine she was abducted and sold off into slavery, which was not at all uncommon at that time (her own sister had been abducted only a few years before).  The experience was so horrifying that she forgot her own name.  When asked by her captors what she was called, she had no response.  Therefore they named her themselves, laughingly calling her “Bakhita, which means “fortunate.”  Being sold into slavery again and again, she was anything but fortunate.

Over the course of many years she experienced inhumane treatment and torments.  One of the worse was something referred to as tattooing, a process by which masters would be able to identify the slaves belonging to them.  Patterns and designs would be place upon the skin using flour, after which a razor was used to carve the images in permanently.  Salt was placed over the wounds to insure that deep scarring would take place.  Josephine related later that the pain was so excruciating she wondered how she even survived it.

The words of our first reading this morning could easily apply to Josephine Bakhita:

Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery? …So I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me.  My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle; they come to an end without hope.

—Job 7:1;6

But as with Job, even so for Josephine, those days did not end without hope.  She was eventually sold to a family connected with the Italian Consulate, and began to experience kindness and even affection for the first time.  Due to civil unrest, the family she was with was forced to return to Italy, and Josephine asked to go with them.  Once in Italy she became familiar with the Canossian Sisters and even began to take classes in preparation for becoming a Christian.  She was baptized, confirmed and received the Eucharist, choosing the Christian name “Josephine,” as well as retaining the Arabic name “Bakhita,” for she considered herself fortunate indeed to have found the one she now referred to as the true Master.

Josephne Bakhita later joined the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and was renowned for her joyful love of God and neighbor.   People would come to see her there at the convent, where she would bring them to the baptismal fount, with tears of great joy, and introduce them to it.  She would say: “This is where I became a daughter of God.”  She had been touched by Christ and healed of so much pain, a past filled with so much sorrow.

Asked once what she would say if she were to meet the persons who had abducted her so many years ago, she took that question one step further and 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 today" (Bakhita Tells Her Story, by Maria Luisa Dagnino, 1993). 

On October 1, 2000, Blessed John Paul II canonized St. Josephine Bakhita and this coming Wednesday, February 8, we celebrate her Feast Day.  She is a remarkable and inspiring woman of courage, virtue and faith who teaches us all what it means to be touched by Jesus Christ in the sacraments of the Church and to be healed.  Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical Spe Salvi, relates how she came to understand her life and her future with God: “I am definitely loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this love.  And so my life is good.”

So I would like to come back once again to the question that I asked at the beginning of this reflection:

What happened to you on the day that you were baptized?

What happened to you on the day you received the Sacrament of Confirmation?


And what will happen to you today, as you encounter Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, He who “continues to ‘touch’ us in order to heal us” ?

The Voice of God

(4th Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year B; This homily was given on 28 January, 2012 at All Saints Catholic Church, Woonsocket, R.I. and on 29 January, 2012 at St. Pius X Church in Westerly, R.I. See Deuteronomy 18:15-20 and Mark 1:21-28)

You have probably seen the cartoon series by Gary Larson called "The Far Side." It has that unique ability to capture both the comic and the bizzarre at the same time. One of my favorite Far Side cartoons shows a man sitting down with his children, reading a book. The faces of the children are frozen in terror, as the caption at the bottom explains the reason: 
Stephen King, reading a bedtime story!

Our first reading this weekend goes something like that. Moses is relating to the people of Israel their own previous experience at hearing the voice of the Lord back when He revealed Himself with great power in the sight of all. He says:

"This is exactly what you requested of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, 'Let us not again hear the voice of the Lord, our God . . . lest we die'."

-Deuteronomy 18:16-17

They were literally scared to death to hear the voice of God, and for good reason! God’s voice, His power and majesty, is something we should all certainly be afraid of. His righteousness, His sovereignty is overwhelming. He spoke, and the world came into existence out of nothing. He merely says the word, and His voice brings into existence mountains and valleys, oceans and dry land. The voice of God is awesome in power and strength. But is not the voice of God also the voice of a father? Even the voices of earthly fathers often bring consolation, comfort, peace and joy to their children. Why should God’s voice be any different, He who is our heavenly Father?

Which brings us back to Stephen King and his children. While his daughter Naomi was still young, Stephen King realized that she did not share the same interest in his horror fiction that many others did. After writing thirteen best-selling novels he realized that she had not read one of them since she had no interest in the stories that had been such a big success for others. Therefore he decided to write a story just for her, a fairy tale that a little girl would enjoy. He called it, "The Eyes of the Dragon," and naturally it was a best seller.

At first his daughter was a little reluctant. Yet soon she found herself engrossed in the novel that had been written for that very purpose. On his website, Stephen King tells how moved he was the day Naomi finished that book. He tells how she hugged him and said that the only problem she had with the book was that it eventually had to come to an end.

Towards the end of "The Eyes of the Dragon," there is a powerful scene in which Peter, one of the main characters, is finally freed from the tower where he has been a prisoner for so long. He had been framed for the murder of his father, the King. He was the rightful heir to the throne, but no one knew it.

As he is freed there is great chaos in the square, but Peter begins to direct and motivate the people around him, so as to bring order and guide their escape. The people, who do not recognize this young man by his shabby clothing or unkempt appearance, immediately recognize that this is no ordinary voice. This is the voice of a king. They follow that voice instinctively and are able to fight successfully against the forces of darkness around them.

In the Gospel this weekend, we hear once again the voice of God. It’s the same voice that the people of Israel heard at Horeb, but this time it has a body to go with it! It is the voice of Christ teaching in the synagogue and the people are no less amazed. That voice is proclaiming the word of God and casting out unclean spirits, freeing those who had been enslaved by evil.

St. Mark relates the reaction of the people:

"All were amazed and asked one another, 'What is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him'."

-Mark 1:27

We live in a world that longs for that voice and desperately needs the freedom it calls forth. Yet sadly it is also a world that often closes itself off from that voice and refuses to listen to it. The voice of God continues to resound in the world in which we live through the Church that Christ founded. The voice of Christ echos thoughout the centuries in the teachings of the Church, clearly expressing some of the most fundamental dimensions of what it means to be human and to live in this world with our hearts and minds set on things eternal. Yet daily we can see a culture which fails to listen to that voice.

The voice of God in the teachings of our faith calls out in splendid witness to the dignity of every human life, from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. Nonetheless, we see all around us the "culture of death" and abortion on demand as the law of the land, signalling the lowest ebb of respect for human life in our nation's history. 


And yet, still, the voice of God resounds, calling for another way: the way of life.

In our own personal lives, we also need to listen to that voice and follow it if we are to be the men and women of the Gospel that God is calling us to be. His voice is the voice of power, the voice of authority, the voice that is calling us to a better life, a higher path.

• Where do we need to listen to that voice, calling us away from the sins and habits which only lead us further away from God? How are we called to tune in to that voice and allow it to lead us closer to Christ and to each other?
• Where is the voice of Christ echoing in our families, teaching us about forgiveness and patience as we draw closer together and, together, closer to Him?
• Where is the voice of God in the teachings of the Church guiding our communities and our schools to focus on prayer and faith, and the fundamental principles and virtues which will lead us, in the end, to eternal life with God?

May we come to recognize, more and more clearly, that voice of God in our lives, not as something to be feared and avoided but as a voice to be embraced and loved, adored and worshipped. Like Stephen King's daughter, who was so enraptured by that story written just for her, may we also come to recognize that the voice of God is constantly telling our story, a story that begins here in time but continues for an eternity with Him; indeed, a story that will never end.

Yes, Virginia, There is a God in Bethlehem

Angels Announcing the Birth of Christ to the Shepherds 1639 by Govert Teunisz. Flinck (Solemnity of the Nativity-Year B; This homily was given on 25 December, 2011 at St. Joseph's Church in Woonsocket, R.I.; See John 1:1-18) The year was 1897 and an eight-year-old girl named Virginia O’Hanlon was having a crisis of faith. Her friends had confronted her and suggested that, because they had never seen Santa Claus, he must not really exist. Obviously shaken by that kind of challenge she went to her father and asked for his advice. He told her to write a letter to the local paper, The New York Sun, and wait to hear what they would say. "If you see it in The Sun," he had told her,"it’s so." Virginia followed her father’s advice and the reply she received is today the most reprinted newspaper editorial ever written; it has been translated into dozens of languages and has been read by children and adults the world over for more than a century. That famous editorial begins: "Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge." "The skepticism of a skeptical age…" Those are fairly big words for an eight-year-old girl, but of course the editor was not only writing to Virginia; he was writing to everyone who has ever been confronted with the challenge of believing in a world and in things that—although invisible—are every bit as real and enduring as the tangible universe we experience each day. He was offering an argument against the spirit of the age that denied the things that matter most merely because they could not be contained in a test-tube, dissected in a laboratory or explained by the laws of Newton. The editor went on to write: "You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart." "Only faith," he wrote, "fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond." Only faith…can push aside that curtain… We come now to one of the greatest Feast Days of the Church’s liturgical year, the Solemnity of the Nativity, the birth of our eternal Savior, Jesus Christ. At the heart of this feast is the God who created this world breaking forth into the midst of it and making visible what has been hidden from all eternity. Christmas is the time, above all the times and seasons of the year, when the veil is lifted and the power of faith is working in the hearts of children and adults alike. It is a time when the unseen world is suddenly made known, manifested, in glorious and striking ways. In the readings from the days leading up to the celebration of The Nativity we hear of a young woman from the town of Nazareth whose name was Mary. She receives a message from an angel that she will conceive and bear in her womb the Son of God Most High. And she believes what the Angel Gabriel says to her! She sees him, listens to him, and surrenders herself in childlike faith to the God who speaks to her through that angel. The curtain was being pushed aside by Mary’s faith; the veil lifting. The same angel had already appeared to a man named Zachariah, telling him that he and his wife, although past the time for bearing children, would also have a son whose name would be John. The Baptist would be the Herald of the Messiah who would come to save the world from sin. Then we come to today’s feast, Christmas Day. Yet another messenger from the unseen world appears to certain shepherds who were watching over their flocks at night, and they were terrified! Visits from angels in both the Old Testament and the New are almost always marked by such fearful wonder. The shepherd’s are told of a child who is born in Bethlehem, a Savior for all the world, "and suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests'"(Luke 2:13-14). A multitude of angels! A sky-full of the heavenly host! The shepherds must have been completely overwhelmed! The veil had been torn wide-open and the unseen world was on display in all its grandeur. Such is the reality of the birth of Christ among us. As St. John the Evangelist describes in the prologue to his Gospel: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. —John 1:1-2 Before time and before every created thing, God is. Through the Word, says St. John, all things came to be and without Him nothing came to be at all (see John 1:3). But then, suddenly, the most remarkable thing happens. God, who is invisible and supra-temporal takes on our human nature and reveals Himself in time: And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth. —John 1:14 The sacred liturgy describes this remarkable manifestation of the eternal love of God in a similar way: For in the mystery of the Word made flesh a new light of your glory has shone upon the eyes of our mind, so that, as we recognize in him God made visible, we may be caught up through him in love of things invisible. —Preface I of the Nativity of the Lord This is the miracle of Christmas, the miracle of the love of God made present and seen by angels and men alike. Jesus Christ, born in a cave in Bethlehem, would make Himself known to a people yearning and pining for the salvation of God. He walked our streets and healed our sick; He opened the eyes of the blind and raised the dead. Jesus Christ suffered on the cross for love and gave Himself in the most visible and provocative way. The veil of the Temple was torn in two as the unseen God left no more room for doubt about how very far He was wiling to go to grant us forgiveness and extend to us the gift of eternal life. But there is a crisis of faith in our own time that is not at all unlike the crisis that Virginia O’Hanlon was suffering from back in 1897. We, too, live in a skeptical age where people are reluctant or slow to believe all that God has revealed. Nonetheless, what people yearn for and long for every bit as much as the people at the time of Christ is salvation, healing, wholeness, peace. They are not looking for Santa Claus. They are looking and searching for the living God. How is God challenging the Church to be courageous in making that God known in our own day and age? We who gather together at the altar of God week after week, where the body and the blood of Christ are made visible, made manifest and given to us in love; we who are strengthened by that Blessed Sacrament and nourished in the Word of God; we are called to make Him known in the world in word and deed, to make God visible because we are His body in this world. May we who see this God made visible become ever more caught up in love of Him and those eternal mysteries that are often invisible, so that our lives may be oriented towards that unseen world that beckons us every moment of every day. As we live our Catholic faith in this world, may the God who was born and dwelt among us two thousand years ago continue to be born in the hearts of all those we encounter in the days ahead.

Advent: Fire Watch

(First Sunday of Advent-Year B; This homily was given on 26 & 27 November, 2011 at St. Mary's Church in Charlestown, R.I. and St. James Chapel in Charlestown, R.I.; See Mark 13:33-37)

One of the more engaging and enigmatic Catholic figures of the last century is the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. Born in France toward the beginning of the twentieth century, by the time he was a young man Merton had both lived in and travelled extensively across Europe and the United States. He was a man very much immersed in the things of the world. Nonetheless, for all of his experiences and intellectual accomplishments he remained empty and unsatisfied.

Not finding what he was searching for in the midst of the world, Merton turned his gaze instead to things spiritual: religion, prayer and faith. This eventually led to his conversion to the Catholic faith and he was baptized in his early twenties.

Following baptism Merton felt called to the priesthood and eventually entered the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery located in Kentucky. His autobiography on this journey of faith from the midst of the world to the silence of the monastery, The Seven Storey Mountain, has sold millions of copies and is considered to be one of the most influential spiritual works of modern times.

In his book, The Sign of Jonas, somewhat of a continuation of The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton writes on his experience within the Abbey of Gethsemani and offers his readers a glimpse of day-to-day monastic life. The epilogue, entitled “Fire Watch, July 4, 1952,” is indicative in that regard.

The fire watch was a responsibility often entrusted to a novice or perhaps a newly ordained priest in which the monk would inspect the buildings and property of the monastery after dark, insuring that all was well and that potential risks and hazards were attended to. After careful observation, with the assistance of a flashlight, the watchman would then retire with the rest of the community in relative peace and security; discretion is the better part of valor. It was fairly mundane business.

Yet for Merton the fire watch becomes something quite personal and introspective. Shining that flashlight into the kitchen and then the refectory, he recalls the experiences he has shared there with his brothers; he is a man of community who has to discern whether and how well he has loved his brothers in that place. He shines the lamp into the novitiate, where he himself was formed for the priesthood, then into the chapel where he was ordained for service and charity. Has he been faithful in these solemn duties and responsibilities? He recognizes, all too well, that this is where one comes “face to face with your monastic past and with the mystery of your vocation.” And then, suddenly, he begins to realize that all the while, as he was fulfilling his work as watchman both exteriorly and interiorly, someone else was actually watching him:

The fire watch is an examination of conscience in which your task as watchman suddenly appears in its true light: a pretext devised by God to isolate you, and to search your soul with lamps and questions, in the heart of darkness.

—Fr. Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas

The more Merton searched for and questioned the God of his vocation in the midst of his fire watch, the more he began to realize that God was already searching for and seeking him, asking the most intimate of questions in the deepest recesses of his soul.

People often ask me when and how I first felt called to the priesthood. It usually comes as a surprise when I tell them that it happened in Stop & Shop Supermarket! Be careful when you shop in those places! Actually, I was not shopping; I was working there, and it happened over the course of several years. Initially, I was given the opportunity to receive full-time pay and benefits, but it would require me to begin working the graveyard shift, midnight to eight o’clock in the morning.

At first it was rather exciting to be working such odd hours as a young man recently out of high school; but that quickly began to wear off. In the department I was in, I worked alone all night and when I came home I usually slept and went out infrequently at night, since I eventually had to come back home and get ready for work. I was living a very isolated life. I had no idea that it was actually isolation by design.

Many times I would ask myself, at three o’clock in the morning and when everyone I knew and cared about was home asleep, “What on earth am I doing here?” Eventually, in those long, pre-dawn hours, I began to ask that question on a much more metaphysical level: “What am I doing here? What is the purpose and meaning of my life? Might God have the answer to these questions?

It was at that time in my life that I began to sense what I would later understand as the promptings of God in the dark. As I was searching and asking questions about my life, I discovered that God was calling me into a deeper relationship with Himself, one that would eventually lead me to discern a vocation to the priesthood. In the words of Thomas Merton:

The fire watch is an examination of conscience in which your task as watchman suddenly appears in its true light: a pretext devised by God to isolate you, and to search your soul with lamps and questions, in the heart of darkness.

This weekend we begin again the holy season of Advent. It is, above all, a time of watching. Christ warns us in the Gospel this weekend:

Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come.

—Mark 13:33

Christ calls us to be watchful for His coming, to be alert to His advent, and it is no coincidence that this is the darkest time of the year. Now is the season where the days are much shorter and the nights grow longer; now is the time when the darkness of worldly distractions can lull us into a spiritual sleep, tempting us to embrace a Christmas without Christ and mirth separated from the One who made us. Perhaps even our own cares and concerns—whether they be financial difficulties, personal or family health issues, fears or anxieties about the past, present or future—can allow the darkness to creep into our lives. It is precisely in these times that we need to be watchful and alert to the presence of Christ who is always nearer than we would ever dare to hope.

May we discover, in our watchfulness this Advent Season, that even our very best efforts to search for and discover God can barely hold a candle to the vigilance and loving watchfulness He initiates when it comes to our spiritual lives. In our fire watch this Advent, may we discover more completely God, who draws us ever more deeply not into the heart of darkness, but into the heart of Jesus Christ, His Son, who comes to us in the midst of the darkness and illumines our souls with His heavenly light.