It was a different world nine hundred years ago.\u00a0 Abelard was founding the first of the universities and Middle English was just starting to develop.\u00a0 The new form of architecture was called Gothic and the new Council being implemented was Lateran I.<\/p>\n
And it was from the Lateran Palace, then the residence of Pope Paschal II that a decree was promulgated, Pie Postulatio Voluntatis creating the \u201chospitaller fraternity\u201d of Jerusalem, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist.<\/p>\n
In your first days as an order you responded to the consecration of Blessed G\u00e9rard to the service of those whom everyone else has forgotten.\u00a0 So you cared for the sick of Jerusalem, and later the pilgrims to that Holy Land.\u00a0 In the past two centuries, that charism has been transformed to assisting the sick and the poor of the entire world.<\/p>\n
All of this springs from your commitment to the model of John the Baptist, who left all in order to radically commit himself to washing away that which brings death and fostering life through the waters of Baptism.\u00a0 So too, you share in his life through the establishment of hospitals and health-care institutes, orphanages and soup kitchens \u00a0an action which, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, \u201cis not mere philanthropy, but an effective expression and a living testimony of evangelical love.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is how you understand your motto:\u00a0Tuitio fidei et obsequium pauperum<\/em>\u00a0(Defence of the faith and assistance to the poor), echoed in the words of the Psalmist: \u201cWhen the poor one called out, the LORD heard, and from all his distress he saved him.\u201d<\/p>\n You remind us that we need the poor, and we need the sick.<\/p>\n The sick woman or man reminds me what is truly important and truly lasting: only faith, only hope, and only love.\u00a0 That\u2019s hard to convince me of when I\u2019m lecturing in front of a Church full of nice people (I\u2019m in control), or ministering the sick (I\u2019m in control), or going to the bank (I\u2019m in control).<\/p>\n But the sick remind me that this voice will grow weak in not so many years and this mind will grow dim.\u00a0 These hands will begin to shake and sometime this heart will cease to beat.\u00a0 In the end, this body will stop working entirely.\u00a0 And I, who spend most of my waking moments in denial, need to be with sick people who remind me of the essential or higher things.\u00a0 Faith, Hope, and Love.\u00a0 It\u2019s all that really matters.\u00a0 It\u2019s all that really lasts.<\/p>\n And we need the Order of Malta to remind us of what the Church teaches about sickness and suffering, about poverty and abandonment.\u00a0 For while suffering and illness have always been among the greatest problems that trouble the human spirit and Christians feel and experience pain as do all other people; yet faith helps the sick Christian to grasp more deeply the mystery of suffering and bear his pain with greater courage.\u00a0 From Christ\u2019s words he knows that sickness has meaning and value for his own salvation and for the salvation of the world.\u00a0 He also knows that Christ, who during his life often visited and healed the sick, loves them in their illness.<\/p>\n So we stand with the sick person, with the poor, with the abandoned, with those whose rights are trampled upon and we encourage them, in the words of the Church\u2019s Rites for Pastoral care of the Sick, to \u201cfight strenuously against all sickness and carefully seek the blessings of good health, so that we may fulfill our role in human society and in the Church.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, while sickness and suffering can have meaning, God does not expect us to roll over and die.\u00a0 Sickness and suffering keeps me from going to Church, from feeding the poor, from preaching the Gospel, and from visiting the others who are sick!\u00a0 Sickness is not something to be enjoyed, but to struggle against.\u00a0 Like the prisoner locked in a dungeon, the sick and suffering person seeks to break the chains of the illness that confines him and keeps him from getting on with life.<\/p>\n So, with this Holy Order, the sick person, the poor and the abandoned is not alone.\u00a0 Rather they are accompanied by you in their struggle.\u00a0 You teach us that the fight against sickness and poverty is a holy struggle, which sanctifies those who undertake this noble work in extraordinary and unexpected ways.\u00a0 You\u2019ve seen that, time and time again.\u00a0 Luke was not the last health care worker to become a saint.<\/p>\n There\u2019s not a single member of the Church who does not have a role to play in this great drama.\u00a0 Not just as a support to family and friends, but (like Jesus) as a friend of the sick, the lonely and the excluded.\u00a0 As one who seeks them out in hospitals and nursing homes, in prisons and in the slums.\u00a0 As one who does not flee from his own fear and doubts, but through the smells, the sights and the fears goes to the sick man and makes him strong, knowing that Christ will judge him on the last day.<\/p>\n I was sick and you did not visit me.\u00a0 Be consigned to the everlasting fire.\u00a0 Rather strong words.\u00a0 And a rather clear teaching about our responsibility to fight at the side of the sick man in his mortal struggle.<\/p>\n And here is where your motto meets your charism\u00a0Tuitio fidei et obsequium pauperum<\/em>: When faith meets the needs of the poor and the sick, we see their suffering as a participation in the Passion of Christ.\u00a0 For sometimes the cancer will not remit, the heart will not get stronger, the disease cannot be cured.\u00a0 On one day, each one of us will find that we are sicker and sicker and that soon we will die. At the end nobody escapes suffering, loneliness and finally death.<\/p>\n So, what do you say on that day: \u201cthat we\u2019ve lost the battle?”\u00a0 Far from it!\u00a0 For, as the preface for martyrs tells us, God chooses the weak and makes them strong in Christ.\u00a0 As Saint Francis of Assisi remind us, it is in our weakness that we are strong, in our littleness that we are great, in our powerlessness that we know true power.\u00a0 Or in the words of the Rite for Pastoral Care of the Sick: \u201cChrist himself, who is without sin, in fulfilling the words of Isaiah took on all the wounds of his passion and shared in all human pain (see Isaiah 53: 4-5).\u00a0 Christ is still pained and tormented in his members, made like him.\u00a0 We should always be prepared to fill up what is lacking in Christ\u2019s sufferings for the salvation of the world…\u201d<\/p>\n It is a noble work you embrace as a Knight of Malta, in faith and love of the poor and the sick.\u00a0 And standing testimony to it are 900 years of Knights whose hearts and lives have been a home for the poor and the sick, standing testimony to it are those who sit before me today…and standing testimony to it are all the good works which await, all the manifestations of the presence of Christ in the poor and the sick who await your consolation, your presence and your love.<\/p>\n \u201cMay the Holy Virgin, Our Lady of Philermos, support your plans and projects with her maternal protection; may your heavenly protectors Saint John the Baptist and Blessed G\u00e9rard, as well as the saints and blesseds of the Order, accompany you with their intercession.\u201d Amen.<\/p>\n\n","news_gallery":"yes","news_gallery_elements":[{"id":85,"url":"https:\/\/kenyaembassy.orderofmalta.int\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2022\/06\/Order-Of-Malta-Feb-2020-163.jpg"},{"id":86,"url":"https:\/\/kenyaembassy.orderofmalta.int\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2022\/06\/Order-Of-Malta-Feb-2020-388.jpg"}],"news_excerpt":"It was a different world nine hundred years ago.\u00a0 Abelard was founding the first of the universities and Middle English was just starting to develop.\u00a0 The new form of architecture was called Gothic and the new Council being implemented was Lateran I.","evidence":"yes"},"news_categories":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenyaembassy.orderofmalta.int\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/notizie\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenyaembassy.orderofmalta.int\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/notizie"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenyaembassy.orderofmalta.int\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenyaembassy.orderofmalta.int\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/notizie\/83\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenyaembassy.orderofmalta.int\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenyaembassy.orderofmalta.int\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}