On 10 February the Church in Malta celebrates Saint Paul’s dramatic arrival on our shores. His shipwreck has been for us a providential event whereby God magnificently showed to our ancestors his unrelenting and abundant mercy. In that occasion our forefathers truly experienced what Zachariah said in the Benedictus, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people” (Lk 1, 68).

Through the ministry of Saint Paul the Maltese were to witness tangibly God’s loving mercy for everyone. The day has dawned up on them from on high to deliver them from the darkness they were surrounded with, to take them out from the shadow of death and guide their hearts into the way of peace (see Lk 1, 78-79).

Such a transformative outcome of the Prisoner Apostle’s evangelisation among the Maltese needed an essential precursor: a merciful heart. Saint John Chrysostom criticised his audience to change their ways and adopt mercy as a convincing witness of their Christian faith, much on the same lines as the Maltese did with Saint Paul and his entourage. “Let those be ashamed that say, Do not do good to those in prison: let these barbarians shame us; for they knew not who these men were, but simply because they were in misfortune (they were kind): thus much they perceived, that they were human beings, and therefore they considered them to have a claim upon their humanity”.

Even if the Maltese of those times were not classified as highly cultured people because they did not speak Latin or Greek (thus Barbarians) yet their mercy responded to God’s infinite mercy for them. As the late Pope John Paul II put it: “The goodness of the Maltese people was met by the “the goodness and loving kindness of God our Saviour” (Tit 3:4)”. Why? Because “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor 9, 7).

The Lord Jesus bid us: “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6, 36). In showing mercy to one another we Maltese open ourselves to God’s constant mercy on us both as individuals as well as a nation! “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” (Matt 5, 7).

Father, in the name of Jesus and the intercession of Saint Paul, open our eyes to see and our ears to hear the cry of the suffering around us. Help us to be for them Good Samaritans as our forefathers have been to Saint Paul and his companions. AMEN.

Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap

San Gwann