Fr Paul Chetcuti sj’s reflection leading to prayer spaces
Hello everybody welcome, That they may all be one was Christ’s dream and Christ’s prayer it is also the human dream, and tonight we are making it our prayer. We have gathered in this majestic cathedral the home of an ancient Order of Knights who felt called to be the symbol and guarantor of a budding Christian European dream. At the time, people were identified more by the language they spoke rather than by their country of birth. The order was one community in the full respect of eight languages
in which Christ’s dream and prayer needed to be expressed unity in diversity like Saint Paul, the local church as well as all people of goodwill; we also have heard the call and been inspired by the dream gathered in prayer. Let us open our hearts to the hope, healing and hospitality that our common faith in Christ and humanity makes indeed possible. Let us start by listening to the account of the warm hospitality the Maltese people have extended to a shipwrecked man and his companion Saint Paul praying that the same openness will endure today as throughout so many centuries.
After we had reached safety, we learned that the island was called Malta. The natives showed us unusual kindness since it had begun to rain and was cold. They kindled the fire and welcomed all of us around it now in the neighbourhood of that place where lands belonging to the leading man of the island named Publius, who received us and entertained us hospitably for three days. It so happened that the father of Publius lay sick in bed with a fever and his injury. Paul visited and cured him by praying and putting his hands on him. After this happened, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were cured. They bestowed many honours on us, and we were about to say they put on board all the provisions we needed.
Perhaps, I was going to say start, but we continue praying. Prayer is the lifting of the soul and heart to God, but since God has come down to our humble world to be Emmanuel, God with us, we can indeed see, touch and feel his loving and saving presence right here and now on earth.
May I invite you now to see to feel to touch him through very simple gestures, allowing them to liberate the child within you, within us, so we can indeed receive and experience the gift of the Kingdom? So now I invite you to feel free to roam around the cathedral where in each chapel dedicated to the different lungs or languages or groups of the knights, there is an invitation to prayer, which is a hands-on prayer that we are using more and more in schools and many other places and which is having a really beautiful and terrific effect on the children. Well, I invite you to go around, you read the instructions, you have something to do, you have something to experience just let it touch you. You see, building a community. With the help of organ music, we are invited to have this simple experience, and you will find a simple invitation to connect to the brokenness, the woundedness, and the division that is crying for hope, healing and hospitality. Building a community of love in our world and our dear Europe cannot be achieved by mighty or impressive ecclesiastical political or other institutions if they are not sustained by the hidden personal inner peace and reconciliation in each one’s personal world, allow God’s spirit to touch your innermost being through the little gesture word action that each prayer station invites you to experience you may also perhaps choose to experience the healing power of her personal prayer praying over at near the entrance to the Cathedral as Mother Teresa used to say: “It cannot become something between me and others if first, it is not something between me and God.”
So I invite you to get out of your places and roam around. There are four stations repeated on the other side so that you have ample space and time
Message by Archbishop Charles Jude Scicluna
I would like to offer a short reflection on the theme of healing by asking you to concentrate your focus on the beautiful marble sculpture, which is the focal point of the Co-Cathedral dedicated to the patron of the Order of St John, St John the Baptist. I am sure you had the opportunity to admire Preti’s cycle on the life of the Baptist. But truly gave the knights this extraordinary sculpture of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. My first relfection is on the meeting of two names “l’incontro di due nomi”. Both names were chosen by God; the angel Gabriel told Zechariah, “You will have a son and you will call him John”and he told Mary: “You will have a son and you will call him Jesus”. In this culture we have the meeting of these two names, of these two persons, but my first reflection is on the name “John” or “Yochanan”, the Lord is merciful. And the other name is “Yeshu’a”, the Lord saves. If we talk of healing we need to remember the meeting of these two names: they are missions, they are vocations, they are called to true healing. The Lord is merciful; the Lord saves. So if we want to offer healing for our beloved continent, for Europe, we need to remind ourselves and believe that healing is going to be a work of divine mercy, the work of God.
When Jesus forgave the sins of the paralytic, the Pharisees objected, “Who is he who forgives sins?”, that he offers radical healing? And Jesus then offered physical healing as a sign of his spiritual power to forgive. At his resurrection on the first day he met his disciples locked in the chamber, afraid of everybody and of everything, and he said, “Peace be with you” and then he breathe on them and he said, “Whatever you forgive is forgiven.” He gave them the sacred power to forgive; to be in a radical spiritual healing.
God forgives, God saves. And as Maria Voce says, and I would like to greet you in a special way “un cordiale benvenuto a Lei, Maria Voce, qui nella ConCattedrale di San Giovanni”, We need to rediscover the agency of God in the European project. The founders were men and women of faith. There is also a hidden motive in the icons they gave Europe; the 12 starred flag reminded them of the Lady and the apocalypse which obviously Europe chooses to forget nowadays. All these symbols which remind us of a past with days of glory and days of shame and shadow, cannot be forgotten if Europe needs to find its true roots and a new begining. As we await of the outcome of the French elections today, as we happened to meet on such an important day, we also remember that tomorrow, the 8th of May, is also a very important date in the Medieval calendar of Christian devotion. Traditionally, the 8th of May was linked to a devotion to our Lady and the devotion to St Michael, the archangel, especially on the Gargano peninsula. However, on the 9th of May we celebrate the Europe day. In Malta, we celebrate also a humble priest who was an apostle of evangelisation, St George Preca.
As I thank you for your presence and also hope that we meet tomorrow for the forum, I remind you of this beautiful image of Jesus, who humbles himself, immerses himself in the river of our sins to bring us up with him to a life of freedom, of healing. There is an image from the beautiful film by Pier Paolo Pasolini “Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo” of Jesus joining the queue, waiting to be baptised. Pasolini sees this from a far; he is interested in the long queue of people waiting to be healed by the ritual offered by the Baptist. Jesus joins that queue; he is an anonymous carpenter from Nazareth. john recognise him and says, “I’m not worthy”, and Jesus insists. He comes to John as the carpenter of Nazareth and coming out from the water he is declared as the “figlius dilectus”, the beloved son.
And this is all Giuseppe Mazzuoli try to bring to our attention: there is a “carteggio”, that flowing word banner which says “ecce figlius dilectus”, this is the beloved son. There’s the Holy Spirit, hovering over Jesus in the form of a dove, and there’s the second person of the Holy Trinity, the Word incarnate become now.
And so an anonymous carpenter is declared the Son of God and we have a share in the divine relvaltion of the intimate love and life of God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is the source of true radical healing, sharing and a life of God, who is love.
