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“It was about this time that Jesus went out to the mountain to pray, spending the night in communion with God” (v.12). At daybreak, he selects the 12 apostles and they all descend together down the mountain. There is a ‘level area’ below and he sees “…a great number of disciples. A large crowd of people was with them from Jerusalem and all over Judea, to as far north as the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon – people who had come to hear Jesus and be healed of their diseases, even to be freed from unclean spirits” (1). Indeed, the whole crowd was trying to touch Jesus, because power was coming out of him and healing them. Think of throngs in City Park in Denver, overflowing crowds at Red Rocks, or a football stadium! His people are those who are oppressed under Roman rule: those who are poor, hungry, weeping, hated, scorned, insulted, spurned. Jesus heals them physically and spiritually with hope. Hope, an indomitable human spiritual trait, was within his people.
Today, we have among us an oppressed people whose history we do not know because we are white. So, as white people, it might be best to listen to James Baldwin: “Every white person in this country – I do not care what he says or what she says – knows one thing…: They know that they would not like to be black here. If they know that, they know everything they need to know. And whatever else they may say is a lie” (2). This is a time of awakening, if we can hear it. We are at a transition moment, a threshold in which through our transformation into Love, we help bring the Reign of God that the Beatitudes point to.
In honor of a history, we are only beginning to learn and the horrors of sex trafficking, there was a sculpture given as gift shown in the Global Sisters Report on the feast day of St. Josephine Bakhita this week. Her story is told differently by the white press and the black press. There is much online information presented through different lenses. There are three links below to different stories: reference #3 is the Vatican, #4 is Anti-Trafficking International, #5 is the Black Catholic Messenger.
St. Josephine died 1947; we don’t know when she was born. She was canonized in 2000. St. Bakhita was born in Southern Sudan and stolen as a young child and sold into slavery. It is her owners who named her Bakhita which means ‘fortunate.’ As a slave, sold and resold again and again, she was traumatized, tormented, and tortured. She found her life’s companion through the love of the Canossian Daughters of Charity in Italy: “She remarked that the sisters ‘introduced me to a God who from childhood I had felt in my heart without knowing who He was’” (4). A recommended biography is a YouTube from St. Thomas University in Minnesota. The Law School presenter of the first minority icon is the first Indian American to hold a federal position requiring senate confirmation.
She is the patron saint of survivors of sex trafficking, and as such. she is inspiring to all survivors. Sex trafficking has no boundaries, and being struck by this, Tim Schmalz, a Canadian sculptor, honored the Global Missionary Sisters with a bronze sculpture of St. Josephine Bakhita releasing sex traffic victims. It has 50 different people within it showing the universality of sex trafficking! Tim tells his story of St. Bakhita’s inspiration in two parts here.
Can we increase our recognition of those who are oppressed, seeing with the eyes of God? According to Constance FitzGerald, Richard Rohr, Ilia Delio, and others, this is the time for raising our consciousness to a higher level of Love and Light and shown in God-directed action. There is great hope for all of us by the unveiling of what has been kept in the darkness.
Let us pray for the victims of human trafficking and slavery, and support efforts of change what and when we can. May Sophia help us spend the “night in communion with God” to open our eyes and then spend our day healing and restoring the hurt we see.
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