Responsorial Psalm (Psalm 84)
R. How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!
Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest in which she puts her young—Your altars, O LORD of hosts, my king and my God!
R. How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/020822.cfm
Josephine Bakhita (1869-1947), having been a slave in the Sudan, had a difficult life to say the least. She was abducted and enslaved by the age of 8. Eventually she taken to Italy and was finally entrusted to the care of some religious sisters where she first encountered Christianity. She said of the nuns: "Those holy mothers instructed me with heroic patience and introduced me to that God who from childhood I had felt in my heart without knowing who He was." She joined the convent and remained there the rest of her life. She is the patron saint for victims of human trafficking and slavery.
These reflections are a result of more than 40 years of ministry as a Roman Catholic priest. Most of these years I spent in the Diocese of Charlotte which covers Western North Carolina. Now I am retired, and live in Medellín, Colombia where I continue to serve as a priest in the Archdiocese of Medellín.
Saint Josephine Bakhita, religious, 8 February
