psalm 104: god will take care of us - wednesday 5th week

Today we celebrate the memorial of St. Josephine Bakhita.  She was originally from Sudan in Africa and her uncle was a tribal chieftain, born around the year 1869.  She was from a relatively well-off and prosperous family.  However, when she was just a child she was kidnapped by slave traders and was sold off as a slave.  You know what a slave is, do you?  You are treated as a thing, something people buy and used according to their purpose, the very opposite of the dignity that we talked about yesterday in our responsorial psalm. 

She was first sold to an Arab family who made her suffer.  Then to a Turkish family who further inflicted pain on her.  She had 114 scars in her body because of beatings and sometimes they just wanted to inflict pain on her.  Then she was sold to an Italian family who brought her to Italy.  They treated her well.  There in Italy she was given to another family who after some time went to Africa.  She was left with the Canossian Sisters in Venice.  There she learned about God.  She learned to pray.  Then when her mistress came back to reclaim her, she told her that she found her vocation with the nuns.  But then the mistress would not allow and treated her as a slave.  She was brought to court.  There however she was declared a free person.  No, the judge said, she was no longer a slave but a free person.  So as a free person who can decide on her own, her first decision was to become a nun, to embrace her vocation to the religious life.

Thus she was baptized, she was confirmed and then she received her first communion.  Then she became a nun until she died 1947. She was made a saint by Pope St. John Paul II. When speaking of her enslavement, she often professed she would thank her kidnappers. For had she not been kidnapped, she might never have come to know Jesus Christ and entered His Church.

Our responsorial psalm says:  All creatures look to you O God to give them food in due time.  Indeed God takes care of us.  Josephine Bakhita suffered greatly from the hands of cruel men, but God took care of her and finally led her to her vocation.  Let us always learn to trust God even and most especially in our difficulties.  It is through there that God leads us to himself, nearer to him as he did St. Josephine Bakhita.