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In our Gospel today, we hear how if even an unjust judge will listen to the widow’s cry of distress, how much more will our God who loves us listen to our plea.
Josephine Margaret Bakhita was one of those who cried out to the Lord, even before she knew Him. Late in the 19th Century, she was trafficked as a young child and sold into slavery in the Sudan, even though it was supposed to be illegal there. She was so traumatized, that she couldn’t even remember her name. It was not until she became a religious in the church that she would go by the name we know her as.
Though she suffered, she eventually was freed and came into contact with Italian Christians. She said they taught her of the God she had been searching for her whole life, even though she didn’t know it. She became a monastic and was the first black woman canonized in the new millennium.
Bakhita harbored no ill will to her captors, not because they were good to her. They weren’t. Yet the circumstances she found herself in led her to know God in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Like the Christians Bakhita eventually met, we too are often the ones God uses us to alleviate those crying out to Lord. Our hope is to eventually live in a world where no one has to enslaved, human trafficked, or traumatized. We certain hope to eventually live in a world where people don’t have to suffer to come to know our Lord. Yet in the meantime, our hope is to hear those who are crying out and do what we can to alleviate their suffering.