Last Sunday, the archbishop launched a formal “process of renewal” for the Church in Malta from St Paul’s Grotto. The time and place were evocative: 2,000 years ago, from this small space where the Apostle healed the infirm on the island, the Maltese received the Good News about Jesus who had risen, revealing his divine power to conquer all death.
As we re-emerge with doubt and trepidation from a collective, traumatic experience, he recalled that on the island of St Paul, “time” had proven to be “greater than space”, as the Church in Malta still seeks to relive the power of that first attestation.
‘Renewal’ implies conversion, and the Church’s document is humble enough to recognise that conversion of hearts and minds can only be a “process”, even if the “journey” proposed is bold.
Fundamentally, only a personal encounter with Christ commits a Christian to discipleship. Nor can one’s experience of Christ be merely ‘spiritual’. Echoing Pope Francis, the document says that all discipleship is missionary: it is in action that a person’s true commitment to Christ is revealed.
But nor can this transformation turn a Christian into a lone ranger or zealot, even if for Christ. Disciples are sent together, missioned as a community. The Church as a whole that must remember its original calling to witness Christ on this land.
Our ‘cultural Catholicism’ must be purified. Disciples must have eyes and ears open to reality, and to the suffering of their brothers and sisters. They must go, heal, and sow seeds of flourishing.
The biggest challenge is our tendency to build walls and hide in niches. The Church is all the baptised. The Spirit bestows distinct gifts on everyone. Everyone’s act of mercy is necessary for our country to flourish: whether in leisure places, state or Church institutions, our homes, dark peripheries or the digital realm.
The document has a critique of Malta’s wounds. The image of kintsugi – the broken pieces of pottery that when brought together and sealed with gold make beautiful works of art – recalls how Jesus’s transfigured body is marked by the wounds of the crucifixion. Beauty and glory are revealed not in the temples we adorn, but in the stones and people we reject and abandon.
None of this is easy, and it implies trust that the end of the tunnel is known only to the Father: as members of Christ’s body we can only trust the Spirit will illuminate the next step if we allow Him to guide our personal lives and therefore the Church’s mission.
Pope Francis’s words encourage: “No single act of love for God will be lost, no generous effort is meaningless, no painful endurance is wasted. All of these encircle our world like a vital force.”
As we embark on this process of discernment, we pray for the Church’s renewal – and that of our country.
https://journey.church.mt/?_ga=2.65678187.418708358.1591880785-615895943.1579872833
nadia.delicata@maltadiocese.org
Nadia Delicata, Episcopal delegate for evangelisation for the Malta
archdiocese