I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father…”
On Aug. 15th, 1982, Our Lady of Keihbo appeared to children and predicted the Rwandan genocide. She said “a river of blood” would flow across Rwanda unless the Rwandan people stopped harboring hatred and animosity for each other. In 1994, over the course of just 100 days, more than 1 million Rwandan Tutsis were brutally killed by Hutu mobs in one of history's worst cases of genocide.
Immaculee Ilibagiza, a Tutsi woman who survived the genocide explained how she was able to forgive those who killed most all of her family. Her father and younger brother, Vianney, were shot to death. Her mother and her most beloved brother, Damascene, were hacked to death.
Knowing full well that if Immaculee were caught, she would be raped and murdered, her father shoved his rosary beads into her hand and urged her to hide at the house of a nearby Protestant Hutu pastor.
The pastor hid Immaculee and seven other women in a 3 by 4 foot bathroom. He brought them food whenever he could. The women could barely move. And they could not speak to each other for fear of being overheard. All the while, they could hear shouts and laughter of the Hutu killers outside as they slaughtered villagers. The killers would chant: "Kill them big, kill them small, kill them, kill them, kill them all!"She heard the killers call her by name with contemptuous, determined voices. "She's here ... we know she's here somewhere. ... Find her — find Immaculee,". They were carrying machetes, spears and hoes — anything that would kill.
For three, horror-filled months, the Hutu mobs repeatedly searched the pastor's house for hidden Tutsis, sometimes coming just inches from the wardrobe that hid the bathroom door.
While in hiding, she endured an intense internal battle between trusting in God and succumbing to paralyzing fear and despair. Nearly all of her waking hours were spent in prayer. But she realized some of the words she recited rang hollow in her heart, particularly the words in the Lord's Prayer about forgiving "those who trespass against us." She felt hatred toward the killers and had dreams of revenge. "My own prayers were about 'Kill them! Kill them back! Take them to hell.' I looked at them as animals; they weren't people," Indeed, at one point, she wished she had a gun "so that I could kill every Hutu I saw," "No, not a gun, I needed a machine gun, grenades, a flamethrower!”she, said.
"There were all sorts of conversations going on inside me," Immaculee said. "I was fighting inside my head: 'But God, You said that you can do all things, that we can ask and we will receive!' But the voices were saying: 'Oh, please, who do you think you are? They will kill you. Why do you think God will save you? Have you seen Him?"
Yet she prayed more and more intensely. "Please open my heart, Lord, and show me how to forgive," "I'm not strong enough to squash my hatred — they've wronged us all so much, my hatred is so heavy that it could crush me. Touch my heart, Lord, and show me how to forgive."
One night, she heard screaming outside the house, and then a baby crying. She realized the killers must have killed the mother and left the baby to die in the road. The child cried all night. The next day its cries grew frail. And by the evening, the child was silent.
She said,"I prayed for God to receive the child's innocent soul, and then asked Him, 'How can I forgive people who would do such a thing to an infant?'" Then, something happened. She heard God say: "You are all My children and the baby is with Me now." She said, "It was such a simple sentence, but it was the answer to the prayers I'd been lost in for days."
Suddenly, the words that once rang so hollow to her — "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" — now resounded in her soul as the chimes of salvation. She realized that hating the killers was preventing her from trusting God. "Their minds had been infected with the evil that had spread across the country, but their souls weren't evil," "Despite their atrocities, they were children of God, I knew that I couldn't ask God to love me if I were unwilling to love His children."
At that moment, she prayed for the killers, that their sins be forgiven and that they recognize the horrific error of their ways before their time on Earth expired. She held onto her father's rosary beads and again heard God's voice: "Forgive them; they know not what they do."
She had found peace. She said, Jesus spoke to her heart: "Trust in Me, and know that I will never leave you. Trust in me, and have no more fear."
When the massacre was over she and the other women fled to a nearby French military camp for protection. There, she learned in brutal detail the fates of her family members.
She acknowledges that since the war ended, feelings of anger and hatred for the killers sometimes tempt her at weak moments. "But I resolved that when the negative feelings came upon me, I wouldn't wait for them to grow or fester,". "I would always turn immediately to the Source of all true power: I would turn to God and let His love and forgiveness protect and save me."
When Immaculee returned to Kibuye, she visited a prison to meet the leader of the gang who killed her mother and her bother, Damascene. His name is Felicien. Before the genocide, he had been a successful Hutu businessman and impeccable manners. Immaculee recalled how she used to play with his children. It was Felicien's voice she heard calling her name when the killers searched the pastor's home. Now, in the prison was Felicien, sobbing, his clothes hanging like rags from his emaciated body. Shamed, he could barely make eye contact with Immaculee. "I wept at the sight of his suffering," She said. "He was now the victim of his victims, destined to live in torment and regret." She reached out and touched his hands and said: "I forgive you." His Tutsi jailer was furious at this, hoping that she would spit on the man. "Why did you forgive him?" he demanded. "Forgiveness is all I have to offer," Immaculee responded.
Does not Immaculee’s story make live the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel? “I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father…”