Creation, Fall and Restoration, 5th Monday in Ordinary Time (I), February 8, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Josephine Bakhita
February 8, 2021
Gen 1:1-19, Ps 104, Mk 6:53-56

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• After having completed a four-week meditation on the Letter to the Hebrews, by which we’re able to see everything in the light of God’s definitive Word, Jesus Christ, and learn how to keep our eyes firmly fixed on him, today we begin a study of the beginning of the Book of the Beginning — Genesis — that will accompany us until the beginning of Lent in nine days. It has an opportunity for us to “re-read” the beginning with the prism of what we have just learned in Hebrews. It’s also a chance for us to prepare for the holy season by which Jesus seeks not just to bring us back to Eden but forward to an even deeper type of bond with him.
• Genesis begins with a focus on the phases of Creation and how good it was. After the creation of light and its separation from darkness, after the creation of the sky and the earth, after the creation of the waters from land, after the creation of vegetation and fruit, after the creation of the Sun and the moon and the stars, Genesis says “God saw how good it was.” Tomorrow we’ll continue seeing this goodness in the creation of the creatures of the sea and the animals, which likewise were good, and arrive at the culmination of the human person whom God saw was “very good.” The goodness of creation leads us to exclaim in the Psalm, “May the Lord be glad in his works!” It ponders the earth, the ocean, the mountains, the streams, the wind, the mountains, the birds, the trees, and then exults, “How manifold are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you have wrought them all— the earth is full of your creatures; Bless the Lord, O my soul!” How important for us spiritually to enter into a hymn of praise for the essential goodness of creation.
• In the Gospel, however, we see the breakdown. It’s a corruption of that goodness we’ll see on Friday with the account of the original sin and Eve and Adam. Even though creation was ontologically good, moral evil entered. And that brought about a disharmony that was never originally intended. It partially ruptured the communion that was meant to exist between creatures and God, between creatures and each other, and within creatures themselves. That breakdown caused by sin was the source of the introduction of illnesses and what they lead to, death. We get a glimpse of that pain and suffering in the Gospel. As Jesus disembarked in Gennesaret, “people immediately recognized him. They scurried about the surrounding country and began to bring in the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak.” Such enormous pain and suffering! It was like whole towns were hospitals. And they came to the Divine Physician. They must have heard about the miracle of the woman with the hemorrhage who was cured of her 12-year illness by touching the edge of his garment because St. Mark tells us that they were all trying to touch even the tassel of his cloak with faith and that as many as touched it were healed.
• There was a tremendous physical transformation that points to an even greater spiritual one. Jesus’ physical healings — as well as his preaching and all of his other miracles — were all signs of a deeper spiritual one he was accomplishing, the redemption of the world. This is something that should fill us with wonder and gratitude. Every Christmas morning we ponder that Jesus came into the world not just to restore the goodness of creation but to redeem and surpass it. In Latin, we pray, “Deus, qui humanae substantiae dignitatem mirabiliter condidisti et mirabilius reformasti,” which means, “O God, you who wondrously created the dignity of human substance and even more wondrously reformed it.” These are words that have traditionally been said by the priest quietly at Mass at the offertory as he prepares the chalice, as he prays that we might enter fully into that wondrous reform: “da nobis per hujus aquae et vini mysterium, ejus divinitatis esse consortes, qui humanitatis nostrae fieri dignatus est particeps.” (“Grant us, by the mystery of this water and wine to become shares of the divinity of him who humbled himself to become a participant of our humanity.”). That’s what God does coming into the world. He wants not just to restore us but to raise us beyond where we were before. He wants not to recreate us in his image but conform us to his likeness by yoking ourselves to him in all his holiness. If in creation we praise the Lord and pray that he be glad in all of his works, how much more must we sing his praises for redemption?
• The other point I would like to make is that those who had been healed by him were able to appreciate their new state even more than they would have had they never been ill, because they knew the gift they had received in contrast to its opposite. Those who have never experienced the deprivation can easily take it for granted. That leads us to one of the most important lessons taught to us by the saint whom the Church celebrates today. St. Josephine Bakhita was born in the Darfur region of Sudan about 1869 (there were no records and no one knew for sure). When he was 9, she was kidnapped by Arab Muslim bandits, forced to convert to Islam, and then sold into slavery on five different occasions to six different owners. As was the custom with Sudanese slaveowners at the time, she was repeatedly beaten as a little girl even when she was prompt in doing what was commanded. On one occasion, one or her masters showed up with flour, salt and razor blades to brand her. With the flour, the owner sketched on her breasts, belly and arms 114 intricate designs and then with the razor blades cut into her skin according to those patterns. While she was bleeding and in enormous pain, the master then poured salt into the wounds so that they would never heal and she would always be branded. To those wounds were added another 30 indelible scars over the course of her enslavement. She was eventually sold to the Italian consul in Khartoum. This was the first time she wasn’t beaten when she was told to do things. When the political situation destabilized, the consul needed to leave the country and he took Bakhita — a name that means “fortunate,” given to her by one of her owners, because she couldn’t remember the name her parents had given her, so great was the trauma of her capture and her beatings — with him. He gave her to the service of friends when he arrived back in Italy, where she helped to raise a baby as a nanny. When the parents was preparing to return to the Sudan after the political situation had improved, they temporarily entrusted Bakhita and the little girl to the care of the Canossian Sisters in town. It was there that Bakhita was really exposed to Christianity for the first time. Her reaction to seeing a bloody Italian crucifix was unforgettable. She recognized that the one whom Christians adored as Lord and Master must be able to understand her pain, since he had been lacerated in his scourging just as severely as she had been repeatedly whipped and then sliced up with razor blades. When the family returned from the Sudan to take Bakhita and their daughter with them to Africa, Bakhita refused. A lawsuit followed that under Italian law and a law freeing Sudanese slaves, the tribunal declared her to be free. Insofar as she was now over 18, she could stay. She was baptized with the name Josephine Margaret and confirmed, made her first Communion from the hands of the future St. Pius X, and was eventually accepted as a Canossian Sister, where she served for the next 44 years as a cook, sacristan and portress. She was always so grateful for the teaching of her new true Parón or “Master” — not a slave master but a Magister, or teacher, teaching her the wisdom of how to live, love and die so as to live forever —  and she always sought not only to live according to that wisdom but to pass it on to others. Even though she had never received much education, the school girls used to line up at the door of the school just for her to pat them on the head, because she was able to teach them the wisdom of life, love and trust. The greatest lesson she teaches, however, is the treasure we have in the Redeemer and his love. She was asked by one of the students what she would say to her slave masters if she were to encounter them. She replied unhesitatingly, “If I were to meet the slave-traders who kidnapped me and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands, for if that did not happen, I would not be a Christian and religious today.” She looked at everything through the eyes of the treasure of faith, and the gift we receive is so great that it justified, she implied, many years in brutal slavery. Christ has come into the world to set us free precisely so that we can be free for this type of mercy, this type of gratitude, this type of love. Yesterday Archbishop Caccia and I traveled to the Diocese of Metuchen, to St. Augustine of Canterbury Parish in Kendall Park, to dedicate a new stained glass window to St. Josephine. There’s a beautiful image of her that dominates the stained glass. But there are three small window panes. One has her native Sudan in relief against the continent of Africa. Another is of handcuffs, chains and a key to set her free. And the third is a quotation that highlights the essential message of her life and the gift of the redemption we’ve received. “The Lord has loved me so much. We must love everyone. We must be compassionate!” She used her freedom precisely for the spreading of the love of that loving Lord and helping those whom he loves. As Pope Benedict wrote about her in his 2007 encyclical on Christian hope Spe Salvi, “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. … The hope born in her which had ‘redeemed’ her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.”
• Every Mass is meant to strengthen us in a similar way, because that’s where not only the miracle of the transformation of wine with a drop of water is transformed into Jesus’ blood, but we, mysteriously, are given a share in Christ’s divinity, of the new and improved Creation we call the Redemption. Yesterday at the Mass I concelebrated in Kendall Park, at communion they sang the Panis Angelicus. The cover of the program had a painting of Saint Josephine. As we were singing the beautiful words, “O Res Mirabilis, manducat Dominum pauper et servus humilis,” they took on new meaning. She was a poor and humble former slave (servus) who became rich and free each time she ate her Lord. This “Res Mirabilis” is the “Miribilius” I mentioned above. Today we do more than touch the tassel of Jesus’ cloak. We poor and humble servants receive him fully within. May we, like St. Josephine, indeed become sharers in the divinity of him we’re about to receive who out of love lowered himself to take on our humanity, take all our sins against the goodness of the created order away, and help us use our freedom to bring about his kingdom.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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