Sunday, September 11, 2011

Saints and Scripture Forgiveness

If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.
Matthew 6:14, 15
In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus reminds us that when we pray "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" that we get from the Father what we put into it. I don't have anything to add to the plain language of this passage.
The saints who come to mind for me when I think of forgiveness are St Peter and St Bakhita.
St Peter denied Jesus three times before the cock crowed and begged forgiveness from the Lord.
St Josephine Bakhita was originally from Sudan. As a little girl, she was kidnapped and sold into slavery. She had several masters, including one who used scarification to mark her as his property. Eventually one of her masters took her to Italy.
While in Italy she took her master's children to catechism classes. She heard the Gospel, believed and was baptized. However, when her master tried to take her back to Italy the Canossian Sisters took the case to court and she was freed.
She became a Canossian Sister and forgave the many people who had treated her as property and hurt her in so many ways. She realized that her suffering and their evil brought her to Italy where she found out about Jesus and became a Christian.
Bakhita means "fortunate one".


May God bless all who read my ramblings,

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

I had never heard of St. Josephine Bakhita - thank you so much for sharing her inspiring story!