Some weeks ago I was lovingly encouraged to write something about the document which was kicked off by the reflection which Archbishop Charles Jude Scicluna proposed at the Diocesan Assembly of November 2018. With the context of a Church gathered in prayer with Mary, the Mother of Jesus and Our Mother, our local christian community started a process thanks to which she can find herself back in the light of the Lukan post-resurrection narrative of the disciples of Emmaus (LK 24:13-36). It is greatly hoped that such process, which I would love to call as a “faith journey”, will finally help the Maltese Church to mature in ecclesial discernment and pastoral reform.
The new googles which the Holy Spirit has put in the Maltese Church’s eyes is to look at herself in order that she can go and evangelize to the whole creation. The task is both interesting and challenging. It is interesting because it is permitting the Church to see herself as a richly endowed reality through whom the workings of the Holy Spirit for mankind are being accomplished in our Island. Furthermore, it is challenging because this embattled entity is called to step out of herself and reach others if she doesn’t want to die a beautifully lonely death.
The document in question, One Church, One Journey, meant of course to guide the Church in her process of discernment, is primarily intended to purify and embolden Christ’s disciples in Malta, in the present twenty-first century, to be missionaries in their own temporary earthly abode. Such a journey direly demands from all those who profess to be Christ’s disciples in Malta resilience and creativity in letting the Holy Spirit using them to manifest God’s Kingdom in our midst. This process of diocesan ecclesial renewal implies eight cardinal points: (1) Encountering Christ; (2) Evangelisation and Diakonia; (3) A Holy People of God; (4) Ecclesial Dynamics; (5) A Missioned People; (6) Ecclesial Spaces in Malta; (7) Pastoral Priorities; and (8) A Discerning Process.
In order for the Maltese Church to be truly renewed she urgently needs to reencounter Christ. The gospel passage from Luke 24:31 reminds us of the troubled disciples: Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. Only in Christ could the disciples be one. If not each one was simply fending for himself. As Pope Francis said in his apostolic exhortation on the proclamation of the gospel in today’s world, Evangelii Gaudium, the moment they met the Risen Christ thoroughly transformed their confused attitude into “missionary disciples” (Evangelii gaudium, 24, 119‑121, 173). With, in and through Christ “they are emboldened to return to Jerusalem there and then (see Lk 24:33); they receive the Holy Spirit from Christ himself who reappears to the group reunited in the Holy City (see Lk 24:36); they witness his ascension (see Lk 24:51); in response, as the remnant of Israel, they worship at the temple in Thanksgiving (see Lk 24:53); and they anticipate the Last Days that, as Luke recalls from the Prophet Joel, are inaugurated in the descent of the Holy Spirit on all flesh (Acts 2:17).” What can we do so that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit bestowed to us, as Christians, be spread around us, on our island? Shall we be the facilitators or the harshest persecutors of this holy process?
The being Church necessarily implies evangelisation and diakonia. These are “the two hands that built our Church as, in turn, it raised her arms in Thanksgiving and worship”. Examples of these two hands in Malta are the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John and Jerusalem (The Order of Malta), St. Gorg Preca’s MUSEUM, the Missionaries of St Paul Congregation founded by Monsignor Giuseppe De Piro, Id-Dar tal-Providenza founded by Monsignor Mikiel Azzopardi, and the Church’s help to the poor and those who suffer any kind of suffering and abuse. Are we, as Church, serving Christ in the migrants and safeguarding human life and dignity in all its stages? What are we doing when confronted with the prevailing indifference to the suffering ones?
The local christian community is called to be one Holy People of God through mercy. Hence, mercy is to be given to unify us horizontally, particularly in our schools, leisure places, churches, peripheries and also within the digital spaces. This unity centres us vertically in the hope of the Parousia. Communion as the catholicity of the one God’s People “is the testimony of each of humanity’s distinct ‘peoples’, who together embody the dazzling beauty of God’s salvation and divinisation promised on all flesh”. Are we working for reconciliation, the formation of every Christ’s disciple, contemplation of God’s mercy and the missionary activity of our Church rooted within our particular cultural expression?
Christ’s pedagogy, who nowadays, as He did with the Emmaus disciples, interprets for us the scriptures within our Maltese cultural context, through His Church, teaches four pastoral attitudes that, as Christ’s disciples, we should adopt. First, Christ teaches us to be a Church who listens His life-changing Word (see Evangelii gaudium, 174) so as “to become God’s Holy Assembly”. This being “attuned to God who speaks to us” will enable us to put our “whole self at the disposition of the other; where all one’s energy and attentiveness are given to the other.” Such a transformative listening will enable us to “listen across divisions, especially with those who might see themselves outside the sheepfold.” The pastoral attitude of listening will equip us to “build... bridges through dialogue” motivated “by the desire for a shared spirit of friendship and collaboration”, which in turn is nourished by “our common prayer”.
Real listening makes us a welcoming Church. By letting Christ opening our eyes we turn our gaze out of ourselves. Let us not forget that “the moment one risks breaking open one’s enclave and walk out the door to relationship, one also discovers their true self.” The detectable fruits of welcoming are: realising our gifts and those of others, extend friendship to both Maltese and non-Maltese and to those who have hurt us or cherish different life perspectives. As Maltese Church we become “like ‘bread that is broken’ to rediscover her original calling remembered in Acts 28: that of sharing the good news through serving all, no matter their background”.
A welcoming Church is more capable of accompanying. It is a suffering Church who wants to heal her “structures of sin” together with those of the society she is trying hard to be of service to. And this she does for “the betterment of another” to renact the sacrifice of the cross, wherein “the innocent victim broke through the impasse of death by allowing darkness to fall on earth”. Thus, “accompaniment [becomes] the courage to walk with another through the perilous but necessary path of death and rebirth” by means of continual purification. The art of accompaniment instils in the heart of her priests, religious and laity alike, “sensitivity and complete respect. As Pope Francis said in Evangelii gaudium: “We need to accompany with mercy and patience the eventual stages of personal growth as these progressively occur” (no. 44). Life-long formation and the sacraments surely make this accompaniment possible.
Only a Church who is humble and courageous enough to accompany others that can go forth and proclaim the Good News of salvation. This is the missionary option of the Church! As Pope Francis urges: “I dream of a ‘missionary option’, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channelled for the evangelisation of today’s world rather than for her self‑preservation” (Evangelii gaudium, 27). The Church reaches out by going forth to the poor since “theirs is the deepest faith”. That is why, as a Maltese Church, we “must seek and reach out to the new peripheries in our context.” This evangelical attitude of going forth helps us “seek those who are distant, and to be ever ready ‘to abandon the complacent attitude that says: ‘We have always done it this way’” (Evangelii gaudium, 33). As Church we are sent to meet Christ in the peripheries that are “encroaching on our shores .. or … emerging right in our midst, in our very neighbours” that we incredibly exclude.
In front of this beautiful and workable vision of being Church in Malta let us, like Jesus, serve and let the poor of our time evangelize us in return to find our True self.
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap