October 8, 2021, Friday, 27th Week in Ordinary Time
Jl 1:13-15; 2:1-2
Ps 9
Lk 11:15-26
The Prophet Joel’s invitation to penance resounds in a period of great desolation: a terrible invasion of locusts is about to swoop into Judea and destroy the whole country:
Blow the trumpet in Zion, sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all who dwell in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming; yes, it is near, a day of darkness and of gloom, a day of clouds and somberness! Like dawn spreading over the mountains, a people numerous and mighty! Their like has not been from of old, nor will it be after them, even to the years of distant generations. (Jl 2:1-2).
Although aware of the impending catastrophe, the prophet Joel invites the priests and the people to a penitential gathering, because, even if the misfortune comes from the hands of the Almighty as a punishment for sins and heralds the great day of judgment, penance and prayer can placate God's wrath and move him to have mercy on his people:
Gird yourselves and weep, O priests! Wail, O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! The house of your God is deprived of offering and libation. Proclaim a fast, call an assembly; gather the elders, all who dwell in the land, into the house of the Lord, your God, and cry to the Lord! Alas, the day! For near is the day of the Lord, and it comes as ruin from the Almighty. (Jl 1:13-15).
The responsorial psalm, reproducing the verses of the first part of psalm 9, already makes believers rejoice for the deliverance from evil through Christ’s victory over sin and death. God has done justice to ungodliness and has saved his faithful from the snares of the evil one.
I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with all my heart; I will declare all your wondrous deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, Most High. You rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked; their name you blotted out forever and ever. The nations are sunk in the pit they have made; in the snare they set, their foot is caught. But the Lord sits enthroned forever; he has set up his throne for judgment. He judges the world with justice; he governs the peoples with equity.
In today's Gospel passage, Jesus has just cast out a mute demon. With the evil and mute spirit gone, the once possessed man begins to speak and the crowd is filled with admiration. Immediately, however, Jesus’ accusers, forced to see the wonders he works, appear before him and attribute his power to the devil. There are also others who, not persuaded by his miracles, still want to test him and ask for a sign from heaven. The Lord has a clear and precise answer for them all.
Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house.
And if Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that it is by Beelzebul that I drive out demons. If I, then, drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own people drive them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you. (Lk 11:17-20).
Jesus does not deny the Adversary’s power, but affirms his own supremacy over him:
When a strong man fully armed guards his palace, his possessions are safe. But when one stronger than he attacks and overcomes him, he takes away the armor on which he relied and distributes the spoils. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. (Lk 11:21-23).
However, the path of faith and Christian life is long and bumpy: “believing” is not a one-time event which allows us to glide through life in steady-state conditions; he who has been freed from the snares of Satan and has put the dwelling of his soul in order can still again fall into a slavery worse than the first:
When an unclean spirit goes out of someone, it roams through arid regions searching for rest but, finding none, it says, 'I shall return to my home from which I came.' But upon returning, it finds it swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and brings back seven other spirits more wicked than itself who move in and dwell there, and the last condition of that man is worse than the first. (Lk 11:24-26).
Christ is the only salvation, as St. John states:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (Jn 3:16-18).
In the life of the authentic Christian there can be no half measures: a little here and a little there. Either you belong to Christ or you belong to Satan. Either you constantly watch over your heart, your feelings, your thoughts, or you force the Holy Spirit of God to distance himself from your soul, which then easily becomes the abode of Satan.
It is certainly not the failures caused by human weakness, the small failures of our daily life that distance God from our heart, but the wallowing in lukewarmness and sin. Humble trust in God's infinite goodness, frequent practice of the sacraments, prayer and works of mercy are the best antidote to keep our interior “swept”, clean and adorned, ready to be inhabited by the Lord.
Pope Francis urges us not to be afraid of holiness:
It will take away none of your energy, vitality or joy. On the contrary, you will become what the Father had in mind when he created you, and you will be faithful to your deepest self. To depend on God sets us free from every form of enslavement and leads us to recognize our great dignity.
We see this in Saint Josephine Bakhita: “Abducted and sold into slavery at the tender age of seven, she suffered much at the hands of cruel masters. But she came to understand the profound truth that God, and not man, is the true Master of every human being, of every human life. This experience became a source of great wisdom for this humble daughter of Africa”.[1] To the extent that each Christian grows in holiness, he or she will bear greater fruit for our world (Gaudete et exsultate, 32-33).
Below is a text prepared by the Pontifical Urbaniana University, with the collaboration of the Missionary Institutes to introduce the African saint:
Saint Josephine Bakhita, from Sudan, kidnapped, sold as slave, liberated and became Christian and religious in the congregation of the Canossians. Asked by an Italian student of Bologna what would she do “were she, by pure chance, to come across her kidnappers”, Bakhita replied without the least hesitation: “If I were to meet the slave-merchants who kidnapped me and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands. If what happened to me had never taken place, how could I become a Christian and a religious?
Continuing the conversation on the same subject, she not only blessed their providential mediation in the hands of God, but excused them in these terms:
I pity them! No doubt they were unaware of the anguish they caused me. They were the masters and I was the slave. Just as it is natural for us to do good, so it is natural for them to behave as they did behave to me. They did so out of habit, not out of wickedness.
She did not complain in her sufferings, but remembered how much she had suffered as a slave:
Then I did not know the Lord: I lost much time then, and so many merits. Now I must make up for this loss... If I were to kneel my whole life, it would not be enough to express my gratitude to the good Lord.
A priest, to put her to the test, said to her: “If our Lord didn't want you in heaven, what would you do?” She quietly replied:
Well, if He does not want me in Heaven, let Him do what He likes, and let Him put me wherever He likes. When I am with Him and where He wishes, I am perfectly fine. He is the Master, I am only his humble creature.
Another priest asked her for her story, but Bakhita evaded his question by saying:
The Lord has loved me so much. We must love everybody... We must be understanding and compassionate! - “Even with those who tortured you?” - Poor things! They did not know the Lord.
Asked about death, she answered with great serenity:
When a person loves another very much, she greatly wishes to meet that person. Why then should I be afraid of death? Death brings us to God.
The superior, Mother Teresa Martini, was tormented by concerns, but Bakhita, calm and dignified, said to her:
Dear Mother, why do you wonder that the Lord is giving you some trouble? If He were not to come to us for sharing some of his sufferings, to whom will He go? Did we not come to the Convent to do His will? Yes, I will pray, in all my poverty, but only that the Will of God be done.
Prayer composed by Saint Josephine Bakhita on the occasion of her consecration to God with her Final Religious Profession, December 8, 1896:
O Lord, I wish I could fly southward to my people, to preach to all, loudly, your goodness. Oh! How many souls I could win for you! First among all, my mother, and my father, my brothers and my sister, as yet a slave... I wish I could reach all, all the poor negroes of Africa. Grant, O Lord, that they, too, may know and love you!
On February 10, 2019 during the Angelus prayer, the Holy Father Francis addressed the following prayer to the Saint, so that she would intercede for all trafficking victims:
Saint Josephine Bakhita, you were sold into slavery as a child and endured unspeakable hardship and suffering. Once liberated from your physical enslavement, you found true redemption in your encounter with Christ and his Church. O Saint Josephine Bakhita, assist all those who are entrapped in slavery. Intercede with the God of mercy on their behalf, so that the chains of their captivity will be broken.
May God himself free all those who have been threatened, injured or mistreated by the trade and trafficking of human beings. Bring comfort to survivors of this slavery and teach them to look to Jesus as an example of faith and hope, so they may find healing from their wounds.
We ask you to pray for us and to intercede on behalf of us all: that we may not fall into indifference, that we may open our eyes and be able to see the miseries and wounds of our many brothers and sisters deprived of their dignity and their freedom, and may we hear their cry for help. Amen.
Saint Josephine Bakhita, pray for us.
[1] His Holiness Pope John Paul II, Canonization Homily, October 1, 2000.