Mk 6:53-56
Having crossed the lake, they came ashore at Gennesaret, where they tied up the boat. As soon as they landed, people recognized Jesus, and ran to spread the news throughout the countryside. Wherever he was, they brought to him the sick lying on their mats; and wherever he went, to villages, towns or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplace, and begged him to let them touch just the fringe of his cloak. And all who touched him were cured.
REFLECTION
Today we remember a saint with a truly colorful background. Her name is Josephine Bakhita. She was born in Sudan in 1869 from pagan parents and died in Italy in 1947. Her skin was black and in Schio, the Italian city where she spent most of her life, everyone called her “our Black Mother.”
Bakhita was not Josephine’s real name. But, since she was kidnapped when she was a young child, sold in slavery and suffered terrible things in her young age, she simply forgot the name she was given by her parents. She was sold and resold on the slave market many times and suffered all the humiliation of slavery, both physical and moral. Eventually she was sold to an Italian Consul, was finally well treated by this Christian family, brought to Italy and entrusted to the Canossian Sisters in Venice. It was there that Bakhita converted, was baptized and given the name Josephine in 1890. Later she became a Canossian Sister herself in 1896. And for the next 50 years she was employed in various domestic chores, which she performed with great love and joy. She died a holy death on this date in 1947, a saint of the ordinary lived with an extraordinary love.
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