Saint Josephine Bakhita

Gazing at a crucifix for the first time, her eyes were filled with tears. “Who is that?” She asked one of the sisters. “Well that’s Jesus,” the sister replied. Josephine Bakhita was being introduced to the man who had accompanied her through so much anguish and pain. Grateful to her teachers, she recalled, "Those holy mothers introduced me to that God who from childhood I had felt in my heart without knowing who He was."  While a slave in the Sudan, Bakhita endured a gruesome process called “scarification.” Her masters would incise the patterns of their curtains or household patterns into the skin of the slaves as a mark of their slavery. The patterns were carved all over their chests, breasts, stomachs and ribs. Then, the masters would make the other slaves rub salt in another’s wounds. The salt would make the scar stay forever. It was so painful, it caused the victim to pass out for days.  I heard of the scarification process right in a threshold of healing in my life. I felt Bakhit