St. Josephine Bakhita: Hope Springs Eternal

St. Josephine Bakhita (1869-1947)

Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Josephine Bakhita, of one of the most amazing and beautiful women to ever profess the Christian faith.  If the world we live in were suddenly covered in concrete and deprived of all light, there would necessarily break from the ground a bud, that would grow and blossom into a radiant, exotic flower, capable of transforming everything around it with its beauty.  That flower would be named Josephine Bakhita.  

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI tells her story in the Encyclical Letter, Spe Salvi:

To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope. We who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God. The example of a saint of our time can to some degree help us understand what it means to have a real encounter with this God for the first time. I am thinking of the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life. Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying “masters” who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of “master”—in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name “paron” for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. 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 a “paron” above all masters, 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 too was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron”, 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 accepted the destiny of being 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.” Through the knowledge of this hope she was “redeemed”, no longer a slave, but a free child of God. She understood what Paul meant when he reminded the Ephesians that previously they were without hope and without God in the world—without hope because without God. Hence, when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her “Paron”. On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and in the porter's lodge at the convent, she made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people. The hope born in her which had “redeemed” her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.

—Spe Salvi, #3

The world we live in cries out for hope.  God answers in the lives of the saints, and today most eloquently in St. Josephine Bakhita.  Asked once what she would say if she were to meet the persons who had abducted her many years before, she responded by taking that question one step further:

“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.”

St. Josephine Bakhita, 

Pray for us.

The Presentation of the Lord

(Feast of the Presentation of the Lord-Year A; This homily was given on February 2, 2020 in Rome, Italy; See Malachi 3:1-4 and Luke 2: 22-40)

Even though we have been in “Ordinary Time” for several weeks now, the prayer before our procession in the liturgy this morning reminds us of the connection between today’s Feast of the Presentation of the Lord and Christmas.  We prayed:

Forty days have passed since we celebrated the joyful feast of the Nativity of the Lord.  Today is the blessed day when Jesus was presented in the Temple by Mary and Joseph.

The coming of the Messiah, as we saw during the major moments of the Christmas Season, brings particular gifts and graces for God’s people.  Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem was promised and anticipated by the Prophet Micah.  God’s promises for the Jewish people were manifested in the Child born in that Cave in Palestine two thousand years ago.  

With the Feast of the Epiphany, however, we saw that God was made manifest not only to the people of Israel, but to all the nations.  In the three Magi, God’s promise for salvation and the hope of eternal life for all people has been revealed.  The truth of God’s unconditional love has been made known to all the world.  God did not desire to reveal himself only for those who were worthy of His presence (that would have been a really short list!).  He does not come into the world and reveal Himself on certain conditions. God’s love is unconditional, universal and omnipresent.

What this morning’s feast reveals for us, however, is that a living, personal and fruitful relationship with God is conditional!  It is not the case that God’s coming automatically makes everything right in the world.  We need only look around us each day and see that this is manifestly not the case.  No, the unconditional love of God has to be accepted, welcomed, embraced, responded to.  There are “conditions” for experiencing a deep, intimate, fruitful relationship with God.  The readings for this feast reveal several such conditions that are important for us as we seek to follow Jesus Christ and bear fruit in Him (see John 15:1-17).  

The first “condition” we discover today in the Book of the Prophet Malachi is that the Lord comes in a particular way to those who wait for Him, those who long for Him and even pine for His healing presence.  Malachi prophesies of the Messiah:

And suddenly there will come to the temple the LORD whom you seek, and the messenger of the covenant whom you desire.

—Malachi 3:1

When the Son of God came into the world there were many who were longing and anticipating that day.  They were not at all disappointed!  One of them is found in the Gospel for the Feast of the Presentation.  Simeon, St. Luke tells us, was a man “righteous and devout, awaiting the consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25).  How long had he been waiting?  Maybe he had been watching for the coming of Christ all of his life . . . Maybe he began each morning, hoping that this would be the day that God’s promise to him would be fulfilled and he would see the face of God.  Is it any wonder that when that moment finally arrives he cannot help himself and he takes the child into his hands and blesses the living God (Luke 2:28).

Another such person, longing for and waiting for the Christ, was the Prophetess Anna.  St. Luke relates that she had lived for 7 years with her husband after their marriage and then as a widow until the age of 84.  That is a really long time to be alone, but St. Luke says “She never left the Temple, but worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer” (Luke 2:37).  She was longing and pining for God.  When He came she, too, like Simeon, immediately responded with thanks and praise and “spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38).  God comes in a particular, amazing and beautiful way to those who wait for Him!

The second “condition” we find in the Scriptures this weekend is that the Lord purifies those to whom He comes.  Malachi ponders:

But who will endure the day of his coming?

And who can stand when he appears?

For he is like the refiner’s fire,

or like the fuller’s lye.

He will sit refining and purifying silver,

and he will purify the sons of Levi,

Refining them like gold or like silver.

—Malachi 3:2-3

It is very much the case that God often prunes the branches He chooses, that they may bear even more fruit (John 15:2). God is willing to allow trials and difficulties into our lives not because He does not care or does not love us, but precisely because He loves us very much and He wants us to be fruitful.  He purifies us especially in prayer, in those daily conversations with Him in which it is very difficult to communicate love to Him and often even difficult to receive it.  He purifies us before the Blessed Sacrament, in adoration and in those moments of silence and faith.  

Importantly for us who struggle so much with purification, we discover this weekend that He even purifies the Blessed Virgin Mary!  She who is perfect and totally pure is nevertheless purified so that she can give herself even more completely to God.  Simeon, while holding Mary’s child in his arms, says to her, “. . . and you yourself a sword will pierce” (Luke 2:35). Yes, even Mary would suffer and endure trials.  Even Mary would have to see her son slowly slipping away from her as the crowds increased and made demands upon Him.  Even Mary would have to come to the place where He was and be turned away because there was no room for her (Luke 8:19).  Even Mary would stand at Calvary, purified as she shared generously in the work of redemption at the foot of her son’s cross.  The Lord purifies those to whom He comes.

Finally, however, we catch a glimpse of why God comes to those who wait for Him, and the reason for their purification.  Malachi tells us that God will purify the sons of Levi (the priests),  “Refining them like gold or like silver THAT they may offer due sacrifice to the LORD.  THEN the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will please the LORD, as in the days of old, as in years gone by” (Malachi 3:3-4).

The priest is the mediator between God and His people.  His role, his responsibility, his very life is to bring the offering of the people and present it before God, and to bring the word and blessing of God back to His chosen people.  Clearly, they were not doing that work very well!  They need to be refined and purified so that they could rediscover the great honour that belonged to the sons of Levi.  God wants us to bear fruit and live fully all that He commands, so that our lives will themselves become a “living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1-2) and make a difference for those around us.

Nowhere do we find this reality lived out more beautifully than in the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph.  St. Luke notes three separate times in the beginning of our Gospel this morning how they came to bring Jesus to the Temple out of obedience to the law of the Lord.  The law indicated that they had to be purified after the birth of Christ, and that the Child had to be consecrated to God.  And even though Mary is already pure, and her son is already consecrated from the moment of His conception, nevertheless, they followed the law.  The gave themselves completely, even joyfully, to the commandments of God.  When they did so, something amazing and wonderful happened.

God had made a promise to Simeon “that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord” (Luke 2:26).  But then He makes that awesome and solemn promise completely dependent upon the loving obedience of that young girl and her husband!  If Mary and Joseph had chosen not to follow the law, God’s promise to Simeon would have been in vain.  But God always keeps His promises, and the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph had no other desire than to serve and love the Lord.  Do we share that same desire?

Where are we waiting for God, longing and pining for Him?  How is He purifying and refining us as we enter more deeply into that fruitful, personal relationship with Him?  And perhaps most importantly of all, who are the people right now that are waiting on the promises and presence of God, people who will perhaps experience that hope for which they long, through our loving obedience to God?