Homily during the Mass in thanksgiving for the nine years of service of Fr Martin Galea, MSSP, as he leaves our community in the Philippines to embrace his new mission as Superior General of the MSSP in Rome.
How do you feel, how do I feel, how do I rate myself, in front of smallness in front of fragility in front of poverty? While I was reflecting this morning on this Gospel and the whole celebration that we are living today, this is what first came to mind.
Imagine all this that is being presented in today’s Gospel. These Magi have been inspired that a king was born and so they risk going on journey with all the dangers it could provide. And eventually they are lost, they need to seek guidance and then, … they end up meeting a baby … and yet they prostrate themselves and gave him homage. They believed, they believed that in that smallness God was being revealed, in that fragility, in that poverty God was being revealed.
For me this is a great challenge, personally I feel it is a challenge, I feel it particularly in my role now in the leadership of such a small Society, it is a challenge. I can just share this, which I have shared with my brothers already. Recently I was in Rome for the meeting of the Superior Generals as they meet twice a year – this was my first time to be in this meeting – and I found myself with leaders of big congregations, … hundreds, thousands – and we are just seventy! – and they sometimes asked me about our congregation and tried to be avoid the subject, tried to push the conversation somewhere else. I have to admit that sometimes I’m not comfortable and I am not ok that we are so small. I think that it is by some kind of miracle that we are there, because normally congregations the size of our congregation don’t have what it is called Pontifical Right, that is congregations that are directly under Rome – normally congregations of our size are under the local bishop. But this Gospel brought hope to me and showed me how still I do not have the mentality of the Gospel because the Gospel makes it very clear that God works in smallness, in limitedness, in fragility, not in big numbers or impressive figures. I have to be converted to this mentality.
Today, in the Gospel, we have this message repeated by this encounter, but even by the mere fact that when the Magi enquire, they get this unexpected answer that this Messiah is going to be born in Betlehem this small, neglected village so much so that the prophet says of it that “you are by no means least among the rulers of Judah” because it was a small village and yet God chose to be born.
And again that is our story. For example, they asked me, “From where do you come?” “From Malta.” – some people do not know where is Malta – they tell me, “It is part of Italy, right?” “No, south of it, but it is a separate country.” Then I tried to boost my ego telling them that Malta is mentioned in the Bible, we are in the Book of Acts – some people don’t know even that! So it’s another way of God how makes himself present in smallness, from the very first years of Christianity, God made himself present on our small island and later on our congregation was born.
So God has His own ways which we need to enter into them, because it is the only way we can encounter God. If we think with the mentality that what counts is power, what counts is numbers, what counts is greatness, and to have influence, – I still absorb this kind of mentality – I am depriving myself of the possibility of encountering God.
Our problem is when we settle, a very dangerous place, and so we do not offer God the opportunity to lead us to a deeper intimacy with him.
Today, – I shared this with my brothers – as I enter my new role I am entering a very fragile place. The higher you go up in these kind of roles, the more you have to depend on God. When you have lesser responsibilities you are more sure that you are able to fulfil them. When you go higher it is more challenging to believe that you able to fulfil them, and have to trust God that He will provide. I’m sure that God is putting me in this space, first of all, for myself, so that I can learn that God provides, that God is able to use smallness for greatness . He will open unexpected doors. In these past few months of my ministry, I am already living this and being guided to enter into this way of living, to trust God more and more.
I’m sharing this so that every one of us sees where he or she is struggling to accept smallness, fragility, poverty, limits and see there an opportunity where he/she can encounter God. Because, of course, today’s feast, more than anything else, proclaims the great desire that God has to meet us. He wants to meet us. He makes everything possible so that we can meet Him. Of course, we are free to resist. But today is a missionary feast, dear to us, as already in the first pages of the Gospels we see that God has come for all the nations and we see other people beyond Israel being called to come and visit him.
This is an image of who God is. He wants us to meet Him and He will be using things that you can understand. He uses the star, the language of these three Magi, so that they can understand that they are being called to meet Him. He uses whatever is good for you to meet him and to have a deeper encounter with him.
Our problem is when we settle, a very dangerous place, and so we do not offer God the opportunity to lead us to a deeper intimacy with him. I am seeing this unsettling happening in me as I’m seeing myself pulled out from a place where I was comfortable, well settled in the Philippines. Sometimes, God pulls you out from your comfortable zone, and puts you on a journey so that in that journey, in that exodus, you can make a new experience of God . This is what is happening to me but again I am sure that in your life God is unsettling you in one way or another, there is something that is making you uncomfortable . Now you can choose to retreat into your comfortable centre and stay there, find all kinds of excuses not to enter into a journey, and explain to yourself that there is no need to do so. But in this you will be depriving yourself from really experiencing the Lord in a new manner, because He really wants this from you.
Let us really allow ourselves to trust God’s providence. He has his own ways how to guide us, how to nourish us.
We have this image of a journey which keeps coming up, particularly in the Jubilee year the image of journey is very important, it comes up because of what the Church is offering. Let’s make sure that we embrace this journey because it’s what God wants, He want to lead you afresh, He wants his light to shine on you, and He wants to give his light through you to others.
Many times. as we are seeing here, God leads us, guides us, manifest himself to us through fragile things. In today’s event we saw how the Magi were led by a star. Walking behind the star is something very fragile, far away, it even disappeared at one point. So let us not expect that we are to be guided by strong, sure, tested signs . We, in our journey of faith are guided by the Church, by its pastors but these are also very fragile themselves. Sometimes they will let us down, sometimes they will disappear. Sometimes we feel that we were let down, that we trusted something, someone and it’s not there anymore. Now what? This is what the Magi went through. God has let them through this journey and when they were about to meet the child, the star disappears. Now what? They are humble enough to ask and to seek guidance.
And God provides not only from the star now but from the chief priests and the scribes, through Herod, who eventually wants to destroy the baby. This is I think is a strong reminder to us that God is guiding us and not X , Y or Z. Because from what I am experiencing at the moment, I know and can understand that people feel the loss, people feel that something is going to be taken from them, the mode of the relationship will change… and now what? But God provides. God gives and God takes. And he does so, so that he keeps reminding us that all comes from Him. We are reminded not to become so much attached to people, to situations, to institutions or whatever has been taking care of us along the way. That is taken from us so that we can realise what its real source is. In that manner we learn to trust Him – at one point it was the star, then something else. Let us really allow ourselves to trust God’s providence. He has his own ways how to guide us, how to nourish us.
And finally we have also to acknowledge that we, of course, are being called to become light for others. This is our mission, this is what the vocation of every believer is all about. Don’t be afraid of your smallness, of your littleness, maybe we are ashamed of our smallness, let us not be ashamed of our smallness because God wants to use you, to be a light, a guide for others. Even through people who were far away from Him, he still uses. So imagine if we showed a little willingness, how much more he can make use of each one us here, to be a light to others. What a beautiful grace would that be, as time goes by and we look back, what a big gift would it be to know that God has used you and me to be a light for others. I think there is no greater satisfaction than that. Your life has been meaningful, God has used you, you have given light, you have given life to others. But we need to allow God to use us in this manner, and experience how great can be the power of God in me. Let us continue to pray that God helps us in all this, in this truth, different from the truth that the world tries to proclaim to us, so that we can find that light in us and share it with others.