Immaculée’s Story
(Is.43:16-21; Phil.3:8-14; Jn.8:1-11)
(Thanks to Fr Don from The Word This Week, here is a podcast discussing today’s homily:)
In 1959, Joseph Gitera, a politician from Rwanda’s Hutu tribe, called for the elimination of the country’s Tutsi minority. [i]
This began a long process of dehumanisation that in 1981 led to the Blessed Virgin Mary appearing in the small town of Kibeho, warning that if the people didn’t change their ways, blood would flow.
Sadly, they didn’t change, and in 1994 almost a million Tutsis were massacred.
During this time, a woman named Immaculée Ilibagiza hid with seven others in her pastor’s tiny bathroom, measuring just 0.9m x 1.2m (3’ x 4’). In absolute silence and terror they hid for 91 days.
During this time, an interior voice kept telling Immaculée, ‘Open the door, end the torture! They’re going to kill you anyway.’ While another voice said: ‘Don’t open the door. Ask God to help! He can do anything.’
One day, she promised God: ‘I don’t know everything about you, but I will continue to seek you. I will never doubt your existence again.’
She asked the pastor for a Bible, and began reading it. She learnt about Jesus and God’s love, and even started praying the rosary. Every day she prayed 27 rosaries and 14 Divine Mercy chaplets, and as she prayed, she started to feel a deep sense of peace.
However, she couldn’t accept Jesus’ command to forgive, and in the Our Father she struggled to say, ‘as we forgive those who trespass against us,’ so she left these words out. But another voice said to her, ‘…Our Lord’s prayer is not man-made. Jesus himself said those words, and he can’t make mistakes.’
It was then that for the first time she understood the meaning of surrender, and she felt God telling her, ‘You don’t have to know how to do it all on your own. Give it to me.’ She agreed to say the full Our Father, but prayed that God would teach her how to forgive.
As the weeks passed, Immaculée came to realize that holding onto anger, hatred and bitterness would not bring healing or peace. But it was only when she read Jesus’ words, ‘Forgive them, Father, for they don’t know what they’re doing,’ that she truly understood what forgiveness means.
Jesus was telling her, ‘The people who are trying to kill you don’t get it – they don’t consider the consequences that will come to them… Being like them won’t change anything. Learn from me!’ she recalled.
She realized that people can always turn from hate to love with God’s grace – just as she had. ‘I knew then that I’d spend the rest of my life praying for people who are on the side of hate,’ she said.
After three months, the slaughter stopped and Immaculée emerged as a new woman. But she needed God’s grace to accept that so many had been killed, including her parents, brothers, cousins and friends.
Yet, through it all, God had never left her: “I felt that he was holding me tight and telling me: ‘The journey of your loved ones is over here on earth, but your journey is not over yet… What is in your power is how you chose to live your life, however long it may be.’”
Immaculée later met with other survivors and she even personally forgave those who had killed her family – she had grown up with some of them.
‘I know the pain and damage of unforgiveness,’ she says, ‘So I plead with you: dare to forgive. Hold on to God, pray the rosary, read the Bible, go to Mass… There is so much joy, so much freedom in forgiving. Dare to do it!’ [ii]
All through Scripture, God frees people from impossible situations, making things new again. He frees the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, he heals the blind, the lame and the deaf, and he brings Lazarus back to life.
And in today’s Gospel, Jesus gives new life to a desperate woman. Some Pharisees bring her to him, saying, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in a terrible act of sin. The Law of Moses says she should be punished by stoning. What do you say?’
These men aren’t interested in her; they only want to trap Jesus. But Jesus knows what they’re up to. He says that whoever is without sin should throw the first stone.
They must have felt ashamed, because they all leave, one by one. In the end, Jesus forgives the woman and says, ‘Go, and from now on don’t sin anymore.’
She must have been overjoyed, because she, too, is given new life.
Today, so many people feel trapped by sadness, disappointment, sin and fear. They can’t move forward. But they forget that God works wonders with broken people.
God does amazing things when we open ourselves up to him.
[i] Kennedy Ndahiro, ‘In Rwanda, We Know All About Dehumanizing Language’, The Atlantic Magazine, April 2019.
[ii] Immaculee Ilibagiza, Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, Hay House, Carlsbad CA, 2006.