Homily for Memorial of St. Josephine Bakhita

Homily for the Memorial of
St. Josephine Bakhita

Feb. 8, 2024                                        
Collect
Thursday, Week 5 of O.T.
Mark 7: 24-30

Canaanite Woman (Tissot)

Today we note salvation coming to 2 outsiders.  Jesus responds to the plea of a Gentile woman for help—on her daughter’s behalf for deliverance from the power of Satan.  The saint we celebrate, Josephine Bakhita, was a slave—a black, non-Christian woman in the white, Catholic culture of Italy.  She died in 1947, and thus was almost our contemporary.

Josephine had been an outsider since childhood, kidnapped into slavery in Sudan, sold 4 times in 10 years, experiencing abuse from various owners until bought by an Italian who took her to Italy. There she was introduced to the Canossian sisters and to Christ, was baptized, won her freedom in court, and entered the convent. No longer a slave, she became a bride of Christ, as the collect says.

Both the Syrophoenician woman and Josephine displayed humility.  The 1st woman accepted what we might call 2d-rank status; she was a Gentile approaching a Jewish healer and didn’t contest Jesus’ reference to Gentiles as dogs (anything but a warm and fuzzy designation), but rather went along with it and even turned it on Jesus. The 2d woman went from “abject slavery” (the collect again) to humble service done in love for her sisters and the poor of her adopted country—doorkeeper, seamstress, cook, fundraiser for the missions, and friend.

So it’s more than fitting that the Church acts to protect “outsiders,” e.g., migrants and other marginalized people; and that the Church strongly opposes sins like racism and human trafficking.

We can’t do a lot about those matters.  But we can heed other lessons from today’s celebration.  Both women encourage us to be humble—to acknowledge our standing before Christ not as claimants but as needing even scraps of his mercy (cf. Mark 7:28); and to be servants of our brothers and sisters in the little ways available to us.