The Ways of God Are Not Those of Man

Jesus Christ, Love, Sacred Heart

Pixabay_SacredHeartJesus

In The Surprise by G.K. Chesterton, the author of a play sees his characters act justly and with love at his creative command, yet he wishes they could do so freely. When his wish is granted, the characters he created act unjustly and with selfishness. They mess things up grandly.

The solution in the play is the Incarnation. That is not a humanly prudent solution, but a divine response. I would think that the solution was to scrap the project of humans with freewill.

The television news recently showed a starving man in a nearly abandoned Syrian city receiving intravenous feeding, but without hope of survival. By his bedside was a child, less than two years old, suffering from starvation. If that is how people treat one another, perhaps the human project should just be scrapped.

So too, that would seem to be the solution when a child, less than ten years old was kidnapped in the Sudan in 1877 and sold as a slave. For the next six years of her life as a slave she was treated with horrible brutality. It is a wonder that anyone could treat another so callously. It is a wonder that one so treated would not be consumed with bitterness and hatred.

A Saint, Who Followed the Way of God: Forgiveness

St. Josephine Bakhita has said that as child, she had experienced God in her heart without knowing who he was. “Seeing the sun, the moon and the stars, I said to myself: who could be the Master of these beautiful things? And I felt a great desire to see him, to know him and to pay him homage…”. This judgment and longing survived through the first six brutal years of her slavery. I do not think I could endure one day, let alone believe that there could possibly exist a God worth knowing.

In 1883 in Khartoum, she was sold to the Italian vice consul. In his household as a servant, Bakhita was treated with cordiality. Upon returning to Italy in 1885, the vice consul gave the custody of Bakhita to a friend, Signora Michieli. Bakhita served as nanny to the Michieli daughter, Alice. When the Signora went to visit her husband in Sudan in late 1889, Bakhita and Alice were placed in the custody of the Canossian Sisters in Venice. Upon her return, Bakhita refused to leave the Canossian Sisters. Because she was now of age, an Italian Court ruled in favor of Bakhita.

Bakhita became a catechumen and was baptized Josephine Margaret Fortunata by the future St. Pius X, then Giuseppe Sarto, cardinal archbishop of Venice. She entered the novitiate in 1893 and died on February 8, 1947. She was canonized in 2000.

What a stunning grace to know that God her creator had become incarnate to save her by enduring the same vile treatment she had received from her tormentors. When asked what she would do if she were to meet those who kidnapped her, the saint replied, “If I were to meet those who kidnapped me, and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands. For, if these things had not happened, I would not have been a Christian and a religious today”.

The Saint Challenges Me to See the Way

I stand in complete awe at the holiness of St. Josephine Bakhita. I admire her for not hating God, but for accepting in her life suffering that so closely mirrored that of her Savior. This impresses me so that I am insufficiently appreciative of that in which her holiness consists. Her holiness exists in her forgiveness of her persecutors, which forgiveness is the hope that they too would be saved by the passion of Jesus.

My initial reaction is not that they would be forgiven and come to know the love of Jesus, but that their punishment, if it was not to be their destruction in this life, that it would only be postponed to after their death. In this I am utterly wrong and dishonor the essence of Bakhita’s holiness. How can I wish the punishment rather than the conversion of others, when I say each day, ‘forgive us as we forgive?’

The Saint’s Challenge is Also to Today’s World

Bakhita was kidnapped by Arab slave traders and forcibly converted to Islam. Her early owners, who hurt her were also Muslim. Today we are told by our government leaders that the solution to ISIS is to kill them all. The Saint is utterly opposed to that. We are not to hate, but to love our enemies and to do good to those who hate us. It is impossible with man, but with God everything is possible.

Father Jacques Philippe has identified the true solution to militant Islam in our own day, “We must pray for the conversion of the jihadists. There certainly is among them some future Saint Paul.” To my personal inclination to think the solution is scrapping the project of humans with free will, Fr. Philippe states, “Sainthood should amaze us more than sin scandalizes us; for the former is far greater.” In the case of Josephine Bakhita, sainthood surely does amaze more than sin scandalizes.

I should learn not merely to give assent, but to take to heart the words of Fr. Philippe, “The Church is not made of some perfect elite, but rather of sinners journeying towards conversion. It is a place where we can meet both man’s wretchedness and God’s unbounded mercy”. Perhaps I can learn this if I pray daily to St. Bakhita for the conversion of all Muslims, especially jihadists.

In retrospect, Bakhita was able to see her suffering as a grace. She saw it as an honor to be able to imitate the humility of Christ in his suffering, which he endured out of love for the very ones (us), who are inflicting unjust punishment on the innocent.

In imitation of the Saint, I should set aside any feeling of retribution to those who hurt her and pray for her intercession for the conversion of all, especially Muslims. God does not desire punishment. Rather, he is “God our savior, who wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth.” (1 Tm 2:3-4)

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1 thought on “The Ways of God Are Not Those of Man”

  1. In Mark 12 Jesus tells the parable of a vineyard and the wicked workers who beat and finally plot to kill
    the owners son who has come to reason with them. In the end the He poses a question – “Therefore, what will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the farmers and give the vineyard to others. What you seem to be confusing here is private guilt as opposed to collective guilt regarding the evil of ISIS . Sure, get the name of some jihadist and make his conversion your personal love offering through prayer but never forget that in this material plane making Right through Might is our holy responsibility. In the Hindu view there are 4 divisions of society, each having a crucial role: the priest, the householder the merchant and the soldier. In each vocation there are 3 ways to act: In the mode of goodness, passion or ignorance. For a soldier to kill with glee is a sin as opposed to one who discharges his duty for the sole reason to right a wrong.

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