“Fr Victor (Grech) was not just a priest and servant; but, by following Jesus’s example, he was also a prophet. He had the courage to reveal to the country her wounds … and not just to direct his gaze upon them, but to heal them.” So Archbishop Charles Scicluna paid tribute to a local legend, honoured by Church and state, and most meaningfully, by the many men and women whose lives he touched. For wounds are not simply in the social fabric, but in people’s hearts, and any healing of collective ills can only begin with tending individual souls.

The funeral homily, a fitting farewell to an extraordinary life, came just two days before Malta’s annual remembrance of St Paul’s shipwreck and his healing ministry among us. This national holiday marks the “birthday” of the local Church, and against this backdrop, Mgr Grech’s life shines as truly Maltese and truly Christian. It also challenges us to stop and ponder: who are the prophets in our midst today? What wounds cry out for attention and healing in our land?

We are experiencing a change of epoch, where easy access to communication technologies paradoxically accelerated the collapse of human relating and led to an epidemic of loneliness. We are living an era of the rapid movement of peoples, where the reasonable attitude would be to live as brothers and sisters, but fear and mistrust still divide and shatter. We breathe environmental degradation; the rage of land and sea can seem like a ticking time bomb – and most of this horror is but a loud reminder of our greed. As the ground of our cultural assumptions disappears, we are left with Pope Francis’s evocative image for “being Church” in our times: a “field hospital after battle”, where the few are called to tend to the wounds of so many.

In this context, where tightness in our throat can become the choking silence of unprocessed grief, the first utterance of the prophet can only be a cry of lamentation – a cry that acknowledges what is. But once the song of lament transcends the sorrow of tears, the prophet focuses attention on concrete ills and a strategy to heal them.

What wounds cry out for attention and healing in our land?

From the 1980s, Mgr Grech noticed the wounds of substance abuse and other addictions, and invested his energy to make a difference. This was not just the contribution of a citizen, but of a priest, and precisely because the local Church was attuned to the needs of the people.

Forty years later, the people in Malta are from every corner of the world and their needs are more complex, but the Church’s mission remains the same one given by the Apostle – of naming and healing cultural wounds rooted in people’s souls.

It is not enough to enshrine the memory of inspirational figures by praising their accomplishments or calling them saints. What truly honours the prophet is to walk their path of naming and healing: the scourge of mental illness; being just to the stranger by welcoming them as our new neighbours; tending to our common home, and perhaps more. Likewise, the Church’s mission is not only of priesthood and servanthood, but of prophecy: of being attuned to a broken reality and its healer.

May the local Church continue in the footsteps of giants like Mgr Grech by honouring her prophetic mission.

Nadia Delicata is episcopal delegate for the Malta archdiocese.

nadia.delicata@maltadiocese.org