02/08/2026
I was thinking today about how St. Josephine Bakhita was once a child — scared, alone, and sold into slavery.
A little girl whose world was violently taken from her.
I wonder if, like many survivors, she thought her life was over.
I wonder if her body trembled when her captors walked by.
I wonder if she held her breath in strange places with strange people — unsure if it was safe to exhale.
I wonder if she ever questioned her worth… her belovedness… her place in the world.
And I wonder, too, about the wounds of racism wrapped inside that suffering.
I wonder if shame ever tried to settle into her little heart — if her own body ever felt like a curse instead of a blessing.
I wonder if she ever imagined what life might be like as someone else… someone treated as more worthy, more human.
I used AI to create an image to help me sit with this wondering — since we don’t have a photo of St. Bakhita as a child — and I was struck by how real this little girl felt.
You can see the innocence. You can almost feel it.
St. Bakhita was so precious — and before she became the woman we honor today, she was a traumatized child navigating injustice, abuse, slavery, corrupt power, and conquest.
Her story reminds us that saints are not distant, untouchable figures. They were once children carrying fear, wounds, and memories in their bodies — children who were not protected or cherished in the ways God intended.
And yet…
Grace met her there.
Her life reminds me that holiness does not erase trauma — it transforms it. That the suffering child is not forgotten. That even the most violated chapters of a life can be held, redeemed, and woven into something radiant.
When we remember that saints were once vulnerable children, their holiness becomes more human… and somehow closer to our own healing.
St. Josephine Bakhita, pray for us. May we relish in the childlike joy, safety, faith, and freedom you know so well now.
