Freedom and Slavery – St Josephine Bakhita

In Spe salvi, his recent encyclical letter on hope, Benedict XVI speaks about three people whose lives testify to the power of Christian hope. One is Cardinal Nguyen van Thuan who died just a few years ago. He spent many years in Vietnamese jails, thirteen of them in solitary confinement. He was able to keep going because he was able to keep praying. His sermons and writings continue to give great encouragement to many people. The second is the 19th century Vietnamese saint Paul Le-Bao-Tinh, also imprisoned and eventually martyred for the faith. His description of the conditions in which he was kept are, Pope Benedict says, ‘a letter from Hell’, but Christ has descended into “Hell” and so the star of Hope has risen even in the midst of terrible and well-nigh unbearable torment.

The third witness is the Sudanese saint Josephine Bakhita whose feast day is today. She was born in Darfur about 1869 and stolen by slave-traders when she was nine. She was sold on five times to different masters and treated terribly by them: her body had 144 scars. Eventually she came to know a different kind of ‘paron’ or master, the God of Jesus Christ, by whom, she was convinced, she was known and loved – and awaited.

In pointing to St Josephine, the Pope is pointing to the radical character of Christian hope. To be without God in the world is to be without hope. To have faith in God is to have hope no matter what one’s circumstances. This is not to be misunderstood. He is not saying that it is okay to be a slave or to enslave: of course not. But he is taking up what St Paul says about this too, that to be ‘enslaved’ to the Living God is to be truly free whereas to live in what looks like freedom but without knowing God is to be enslaved, trapped in the service of some false god or gods.

One of the striking thoughts in St Josephine’s writings is that hope gives the believer the conviction that he or she is awaited. The God who became a slave so that we might become free knows me, she says, and loves me, and waits for me. We tend to think of ourselves – especially in Advent and Lent – as the ones who must do the waiting and make the preparations. But our faith teaches that there is One who has waited longer, and will wait longer. There is One who has made far more extensive preparations, sending the Son to lead us home to the banquet prepared for us. St Josephine writes:

I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.

It is another way of saying what we read in I John 4:9-10

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.

That love is the reason for the hope that is in us and the root of our joy.