St Paul's Shipwreck - something to celebrate.

The 10th of February is a special day on the island of Malta, for on that day people celebrate the feast of the shipwreck of St Paul. this occured in the year 60 AD and is recoreded in the last chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. Last year was the 1950th annivesary of this event and Pope Benedict XVI visited the island to mark the occasion. Here we bring some extracts from his homily; these were delivered when the Pope himself was experiencing a his own storm in the media.



The Holy Father praying at the Grotto of St Paul in Rabat during his visit to Malta.



“Saint Paul’s arrival in Malta was not planned. As we know, he was travelling to Rome when a violent storm arose and his ship ran aground on this island. Sailors can map a journey, but God, in his wisdom and providence, charts a course of his own. Paul, who dramatically encountered the Risen Lord while on the road to Damascus, knew this well. The course of his life was suddenly changed; henceforth, for him, to live was Christ (cf. Phil 1:21); his every thought and action was directed to proclaiming the mystery of the Cross and its message of God’s reconciling love.

“That same word, the word of the Gospel, still has the power to break into our lives and to change their course. Today the same Gospel which Paul preached continues to summon the people of these islands to conversion, new life and a future of hope. Standing in your midst as the Successor of the Apostle Peter, I invite you to hear God’s word afresh, as your ancestors did, and to let it challenge your ways of thinking and the way you live your lives.” [St Paul’s Grotto, 17^th April 2011, Rabat]

“[In] the account of Paul’s shipwreck on the coast of Malta, and his warm reception by the people of these islands [we] notice how the crew of the ship, in order to survive, were forced to throw overboard the cargo, the ship’s tackle, even the wheat which was their only sustenance. Paul urged them to place their trust in God alone, while the ship was tossed to and fro upon the waves. We too must place our trust in him alone. It is tempting to think that today’s advanced technology can answer all our needs and save us from all the perils and dangers that beset us. But it is not so. At every moment of our lives we depend entirely on God, in whom we live and move and have our being. Only he can protect us from harm, only he can guide us through the storms of life, only he can bring us to a safe haven, as he did for Paul and his companions adrift off the coast of Malta. They did as Paul urged them to do, and so it was “that they all escaped safely to the land” (Acts 27:44).

“More than any of the cargo we might carry with us – in terms of our human accomplishments, our possessions, our technology – it is our relationship with the Lord that provides the key to our happiness and our human fulfilment. And he calls us to a relationship of love…” [18^th April 2011 – Floriana]

St. Josephine Bakhita of Sudan

 Today,February 8, is the feast day of St. Josephine Bakhita. She was born in what is today the troubled region of Darfur, Sudan around 1870. St. Bakhita was canonized by Pope John Paul II in the Jubilee Year 2000, and is cited by Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical, Spe Salvi as an inspiring example of Christian hope.

... at this point a question arises: in what does this hope consist which, as hope, is “redemption”? The essence of the answer is given in the phrase from the Letter to the Ephesians quoted above: the Ephesians, before their encounter with Christ, were without hope because they were “without God in the world”. To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope. We who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God. The example of a saint of our time can to some degree help us understand what it means to have a real encounter with this God for the first time.

I am thinking of the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life.